Long time listener first time caller...
After much fart-arseing around, I got myself into gear and acquired a naked ADSL plan (Flip) for my end-of-the-line house at the edge of the suburb in Porirua, only to find the speeds were absolutely horrible. I'm talking ~1Mbit on speedtest at anything remotely close to peak time.
I'll be honest, I didn't have high hopes for the performance, but I did expect something at least in the range of actually usable for basic internet activities during peak hour - this isn't. I've been through the usual try-a-different-modem and plugged-in-via-ethernet but the numbers still come up the same - appallingly low. The modem rates the connection at 5Mb/1Mb, the SNR and margin all seem to be "very good" according to what I've read on the interwebs. I think I can really improve my observed speed, as my friend 300 meters closer to the exchange gets 8Mb at peak hour (speed-tested at the same time as I did).
As far as I can guess, the only major factor I can think of is that there is a lot of water in the pipe where the phone line comes out of the ground under the house. It seems impossible to me that this water came from the house end, as it exits under the house which is bone-dry. Are phone lines prone to osmosis?
Fiber is at least a year away. :|