Slow Connection - Pinged at 30,000 MS Delay!

[adoering]

I recently moved across the hall in my apartment complex. Happy with my Uverse 18 Mbps, I asked them to move my service to the new apartment. That ended up being a hastle in itself. I had internet for half a day and then my connection was lost (I think because I was still running off my old ports that were scheduled to be terminated that day). after 5 days of no internet and three technicians later, I finally had internet... However, ever since then the performance has been unacceptable.. I'm afraid the tech guy jerry rigged my connection.

Last year I had three computers running with steaming video, web surfing, multiplayer videogames, etc.. no performance issues. Now, if my roommate streams netflix (the uverse modem is located in his room) my wireless connection drops and I can't do anything. I pinged Ventrilo and Diablo 3. I had a 30,000 MS or 30 second delay! It never went below a 6 second delay until he stopped streaming.

I understand netflix is a bandwidth hog but It isn't just netflix, I have never seen my download rate go above and beyond 600 Kbps. If I do more than one thing on my computer, I can feel it crawling. For example, In my previous apartment I could download updates for my games on Steam and stream video at high quality on youtube with no problems. Sure my download rate would drop but never down to 600 Kbps! I can't multi-task on my computer anymore, which is extrememly frusterating when I often have to work after-hours from home with multiple RDPs.

Any suggestions to test and conquer this issue? I'm going to try a wired connection to eliminate any possibilities my wireless card is giving out.. Though I checked its speed and it was apparently at 56 Mbps...

My last option is to call support, as the song and dance I had to perform to just get my internet back was ridiculous.