That was a recurring problem with Comcast cable broadband. As more people in the area signed up, the internet speed went down. In the evenings and on weekends, it got quite pokey at times. ESPECIALLY after the college kids came home in May. Periodically, Comcast rearranged how many people were on a node and then speed would increase again. But it usually took weeks before they’d do the rearranging.
That hasn’t been an issue with Verizon DSL so far. The speed is pretty consistent, save for the couple of times that Verizon has either been working on upgrades or something broke down. From the lad’s gaming perspective, DSL has been better because the speed is much more consistent *and* Verizon doesn’t drop the connection several times an hour. I suspect the better service has much to do with Verizon having a much lower area market share than Comcast. There aren’t as many of us sharing the same juice.
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Is your speed affected by how many of your neighbors are online at the same time? After we switched to cable, we were surprised that there were times when our connection seemed very pokey. The clever son-in-law pointed out that it might be VERY local traffic that was clogging our community line. Generally, I find that mornings are fast. Occasionally evenings slow down. Weekends during the day can be slow. Makes sense give the explanation, but it was funny how the cable company didn’t bring that up at installation time.