we pay for (we never get it though!) 8 Mb broadband. At our end there is often 5 computers sharing the line plus a hardware voip phone. We find that watching utube video while using the hardware voip phone and using Skype pc phone and listening to Planet Rock radio online doesn't cause any of the services to drop out, ie real time is maintained. If you try to get too many utube videos at once you can see the picture quality degrade but that needs 4 or 5 at the same time. This may be a "log jam" in our wireless network, I don't know how to see where the bottle neck is.
Just after the schools empty the network speed is at it's slowest. Rather than selling folk 40 or 50Mb broadband it would be better for all if the network was improved to deliver the advertised rate ALL of the time.
Incidentally, when our connection was first set up, the full bandwidth of our line was available for a few days. the provider tested it and consistently made 19Mb but then they throttled it back to about what we pay for at the best. Obviously, over time, more users have signed up in our area and the performance is diluted between us all.
Rans6....