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Broadband is improving all the time and with local loop unbundling (LLU) better options are becoming available. I live about 4.5 km from my BT telephone exchange and it was not until September 2004 that I was eventually able to get broadband and then only 512kbps.

My first broadband ISP was ntl freedom and I managed to get a maximum of 512kbps but with LLU I changed to UKonline and was delighted to get 1024kbps and the service seems was more reliable too. BT launched in April 2006 Max ADSL and ADSL2 services too but I have no direct experience of these - see www.dslzoneuk.net for more information.

My third and latest ISP is TalkTalk which again gives me over 1Mbps and free phone calls too - its brilliant.

The actual service you are able to receive depends on many factors and the quality of your telephone line can be measured in terms of Line Attenuation, lower the better, (fairly static and depends on actual length of your phone line to the exchange) and SNR, higher the better, (fluctuates at different times of the day) - see www.dslzoneuk.net for more information

For a reliable service SNR has to be above 6 and ideally above 10.

An SNR of 30 and it may be possible to get 8Mbps and even 24Mbps with ADSL2 if you live within 2km from the Exchange according to dslzone.

Checkout these useful sites with lots of excellent information about ADSL and to help to troubleshoot ADSL problems.

http://www.dslzoneuk.net

Broadband checker http://www.dslzoneuk.net/checker.php

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/