Day off today so a good chance to have a go at this. 1.02 download, went smooth, tried P2P this time and got a fair speed of about 70KB/s. Then I tried registering a Konami ID through the PS3's web browser, and lo and behold, the server is up, running and works!
But man! Signing up for this beta is tougher than most IQ tests I've done in my life. Jeez. I sure hope that they'll use this only for the beta, and not for the actual game.
Of all the weird hoops I had to jump through (stupid konami and game id restrictions like not being able to use capitals, the two not being allowed to be the same, a minimum of 8 characters, the game id only allowing numeric password), the last one was the silliest - the area code which I entered correctly wasn't accepted. In the end I ditched the two characters at the end and then it worked. In total it took me about 10 retries before I got everything accepted. *sigh*
Oh well. At least (if I don't forget the passwords ...) I am unexpectedly ready to take part in this beta, something which I hadn't planned or counted on being able to do.
I also use UPNP by the way, very happy that PS3 games support that so well.