Ubroadband problem

I'm guessing most people wont have heard of Ubroadband, they supply
broadband to my student accomodation, it's Unite (who own my
accomodation) working with BT. (www.ubroadband.net)

The setup is everyone is on a LAN which gives internet access,
supposedly at 512kbps. However through doing some speed tests, and
downloads I only get about 200kbps max which isn't really the issue
even though it is slower than it should be, i think this is more due
to the number of people using the service.

The main problem is that i get a packet loss of about 15-18%. Is there
anything i can do at my end to a) improve the speed (if possible) and
more importantly b) reduce the packet loss, or is all this beyond my
control?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

PH