So we have 3 different things tied up in 1 contract. The 3 things are the phone, tv and internet. The phone and TV work perfectly, however the internet speeds keep fluxuating and giving me lower speeds. I am trying to get a technician to come out because I don't know how to work the system that well. We did some troubleshooting last night and everything turned out ok, speeds went up. This morning my internet speed is down to 7.66 mb, when it should be above 15 / 18 tops. Today they tried to troubleshoot with me with the same steps as yesterday and then bumped me up to tier 2 tech support. I have no idea how I can get a technician out here, or get out of the contract perhaps?

Who we talkin' about???
Dish? Direct? AT&T? Mom & Pop All In 1 Service?

AT&T ... they helped a little bit at tier 2, but wireless connection still should be above 10 mb, if you pay for 18..

I agree, but if they are like most wireless, it may depend on your bandwidth usage. I know that with Wildblue, the higher my bandwidth went, the slower the service got. They had it in the fine print so I was quite happy when I finally got another option and switched service. Of course, if they are helping you increase speed then that probably is not an issue.
Let me ask this...do you have a 'router' on the setup to provide wifi throughout your house? Routers can also sap your speed.

We are waiting for our government to put in a National Broad Band system to up speeds to 100's of MB. but the next probable government is saying they will dump the fiber cable and stick with the rotting copper. Speed depends on current usage and who is sharing at the moment. Do not believe what your provider tells you. My speed is reported as 36 and sometimes 54 but actually be difficult to get 10.

@ Matt,
If you have a router, are there other machines connected to it, that use up your bandwidth? And is your internet connection protected, or can anyone in the neighbourhood access it through wireless?

@Prism Yeah man, wanna see something cool? Check out Google Fiber, it's up to 1000mb and just half the price of what AT&T and Comcast charge except it's only available in certain towns.

@Inger I have my password protected and change it every so often, I can actually log into my router and see the devices connected so whenever I have something on there I don't recognize I change it again. My computers aren't hardwired to the router, we use the wireless.. I know hard wiring the PC to the router creates faster speeds but cutting in half speed because of wireless is just terrible.. 3PC's, 2Phones.

We are hoping it goes through to include our suburb. We are supposed to get the optic fiber laid in October in our street. They do quote1000's of MB but realistically if I get 100 MB+ I will be pleased.
It is the NBN roll out across Australia costing billions to get us on a equal footing with the best in the world. There are these huge Reels with the workmen feeding them in telephone trenches. The reels are 8 ft. in diameter. Cable TV will be cheap on smart TV's but apparently Murdock ain't happy as he owns Foxtell.But as I said the probable new government backed by Murdock don't like it. Politics don't you just hate it.

Prism my friend, politics are everywhere we look these days. I really do hope you get the internet speeds up where you live, and I hope I can successfully resolve my issue with AT&T however the stories i've Googled are not good for my part. I'm in a small town where we barely get the mail delivered to us on time.. i'm lucky if I get my bills paid as well, snail mail , UPS (slow) and FedEx (eh , better than UPS) all have their issues it seems. I just ordered some clothes online and it says the package will be delivered today ( out at 6 AM ) and it's currently ticking over to being 6:00 pm, I know it's tough cause it's summer and all, but they need to re-instate sub-in's for those who get tired. I know I know, I have problems that span from here to Japan but it's something I deal with everyday, i'm just thankful I have CoffeeCup software and Torchlight 2 as my hobbies.

Zero interest in streaming real-time video here. All I need is enough juice to run VoIP 'phone. For my money, 5 Mbit/sec is just fine ... provided that I really get that, and at low latency.

The local cable-based (Charter Communications) and fiber-based (Verizon) competitors engaged in a bitter struggle for market share once fiber got buried along my street last summer. I love it. They contact me from time, to time, bragging about bandwidth. Every time they do, I ask for lower price instead. Monthly price has dropped $10 around here so far. Long live capitalism!

Since the discussion has opened the door to routers, please Google the Tomato-USB firmware. The WiFi router in my basement runs it. It's quick and full-featured. The Tomatoed router provides 2 TB of network-attached storage for the Windows and Linux computers on my home LAN. it works flawlessly, even spinning the disks up & down automatically as required.