Looking for ADSL Modem/Router recommendations

[#1]

The trouble is, if you ring in the middle of the night Plusnet only seem to be au fait with the Thomson.
You have to educate them about what the particular stats values actually mean. 

[#2]

@Force9Original - thanks for the updated response - now I understand a little more - cheers - I'll be checking out my exchange's chipset in a few minutes.  Someone else has also suggested to me that I look at the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and the links you provided should help me with that 🙂
@JoJo - I understand why PlusNet would "officially" recommend the routers they ship and, as an IT Manager, I also understand how standardisation aids support, but even your own telephone support guys told me to avoid them and to go for something from NetGear or Linksys 😉
Cheers, Mark (nikkijames Husband/IT fixer)

[#3]

Ironically,a great deal of  Netgears & Linksys are based around the same Broadcom chipset family as the speedtouch. ( chipset 6338 through 6358).
It pays dividends in the long run, getting the correct router for certain exchange chipsets
Individual Router chipsets  read  frequency bins differently.
A Broadcom router on an IFTN (infineon) Dslam under reads line attentation for example , then  add in  poor filmware , adds to the potential for instability.
Lots of info on SNR
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/linestats.htm#SNR
Thx f9o

[#4]

Thanks to everyone who responded on this thread.  I don't want to speak too soon but I think I've found the issue by following some of the links that Force9Original gave me here.
Full write-up will be live next week at http://www.markwilson.co.uk/blog/2011/01/diagnosing-connection-issues-on-my-adsl-line.htm but, until then, I think this was the fix: http://www.kitz.co.uk/routers/errors.htm (increasing the maximum number of IP sessions on the router from the default of 192 up to 512).
So, whilst a new router might well have fixed the issue, it doesn't look as if the root cause was a broken router, just that the default settings in 2002 are probably not appropriate in 2010!
Happy New Year to you all - and thanks again for your help.
Cheers, Mark Wilson (nikkijames' IT guy)