Hi and welcome to WU. You could try contacting your ISP to see if they have any explanation for the drop in speed. Perhaps BT could increase the gain on your line, that might help. I was once told by BT that the speed that you can expect on dial-up with a 56k modem is anything between 30Kbps to 45Kbps, but no higher. As I live in a rural area a long way from our local exchange, I consider myself fortunate to have a speed of 44Kbps most of the time; sometimes it's 40Kbps and on a really bad day, it's 38.6Kbps, but that doesn't happen very often.
Madeline.
-------------------- "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton, 1887.