I've had a significant reduction in my Orange broadband download speed. I did all the usual things to test and improve my system but was still only getting a max of 128 kbps, so I put my phone number into the BT line checker and it came up with a max line speed of 256kbps, that's right 0.256Mbps for all those grumbling about 2Mbps connections. I'm sure when I did the test in the summer it came out with a max of 1.5Mbps and a download speed check was giving me 1.0Mbps, so I'm getting 0.125 of that now. I'm not a huge downloader so I only noticed when I tried to use BBC iplayer and wasn't able to stream even on the low bandwidth setting. I haven't used the iplayer for a few months, but haven't had this problem before. So what can I do? Changing ISP won't help as it's BT who have reduced the line speed and they won't talk to users directly and Ofcom's as useful as a chocolate teapot.
I'm about 3 miles from a rural exchange without LLU and and there's no 3G coverage, so mobile broadband is not an option. I'd like to know why it's happened and I think BT should reduce the charge to the ISP for such a pathetic service and that should be passed on to the customer.

I see from Samknows broadband that my exchange changed to 21CN in Q4 2009, is that likely to have had an effect?
The service checker comes up with:

BT Land-Line Broadband Service Availability (NOTE: 1000Kbps = 1Mbps)
■YES - Standard ADSL @ up to 2Mbps (BT Wholesale IPStream / Datastream)
Estimated Best Speed (Kbps): 256
LineCode: RAEC


■YES - ADSL MAX @ up to 8Mbps (BT Wholesale IPStream / Datastream MAX)
Estimated Best Speed (Kbps): 250
LineCode: REAEGEC


■NO - ADSL2+ @ up to 24Mbps (BT Wholesale Broadband Connect / 21CN)
Estimated Best Speed (Kbps):
(Estimated speed only shows for supporting exchanges or those with an activation date)


■NO - SDSL @ up to 2Mbps (BT Wholesale IPStream / Datastream Symmetric)
Estimated Best Speed (Kbps): 0


Any suggestions?