My parents have recently ditched Tiscali (which despite alledgedly being a 2Mbps connection in it's final days, never seemed to be appreciably faster than the 150Kbps service which they originally took out with them).
Now on BT Total Broadband (hub phone and vision box and everything). Not the cheapest by any means, but the service is excellent. They get 7.6Mpbs (not bad since the package they're on was 'up to 8') and independent connection tests confirm that they are actually getting this speed. Contention doesn't seem to be an issue at all either unlike with Tiscali which just seemed to be getting worse (and Tiscali had real problems with certain sites - e.g. the download time for Youtube was ridiculous, often 3-4 minute clips took 25-30 minutes to download!).