Bugging me for over a year - same slow speed for Steam downloads

[doodah]

I have had this problem for well over a year but it wasn't much of an issue as I rarely downloaded through Steam, however I find myself downloading demos/games quite frequently now. Basically, no matter if it is night or day my download speed in Steam is always 60k/sec (give or take a few).

At first I thought it may simply be a coincidence, then I thought it might be my connection (8mb but doesn't really come into its own until around midnight). However it can't be this as I have downloaded through Flashget, IE, Firefox etc reaching speeds of 800k/sec and continuing or pausing the download has no effect on Steam. Then I thought it might be Steam but the fact that this has happened for well over a year at completely random times of the year/day leads me to believe it probably isn't. Something is throttling the speed and I cannot work out what the heck it is. Anyone here have an idea?

Same problem has happened on my main rig in both Vista and 7

With Virgin ADSL 8MB and tried changing server location - works fine for 5-10 seconds (different locations greatly differ speeds, all much faster than 60k/sec though) and then just settles back down at 60.

 

[doodah]

Lol - I am not stupid. It is set on DSL/Cable 2MB+, tried it on 10Mb just to see if there would be any different a while back but did squat. KiTBoH, it has been set on UK for most of the time, except when I change region (which others have suggested) to see if it will increase the download speed.

 

[doodah]

Sounds like Virgin then. God I hate their service but we are tied to several more months of their contract

EDIT - It doesn't suprise me if it is Virgin. We have been with them for years (blame my mother) and their service has been terrible; 56k speeds in the evening, moving us to a lower package (10gb a month, though I have downloaded a lot more than that in a month) and not making it clear, awful migration when we moved house depiste us giving them plenty of notice (took almost 4 weeks to get the net in the new house) and finally the worst telephone support team I have ever dealt with.