I get regularly 52000 thruput - sometimes up to 53333. Not bad for allegedly 56K. I changed back from Optus (a digital cable connected phone) to the Telstra copper pair, and my speed jumped up from about 40000.

My (external) modem has a little LCD window which show me this. It's a 'Woomera' - which was designed to work on very poor quality outback Telstra lines, and can 'hunt' the speed up and down depending on the instantaneous quality of the line.

Another trick is to make sure all phones in parallel*** on the line are unplugged.

There have recently been moves to bring in ADSL2+, and the costs are starting to drop, but I'll be damned if I'll sign a Telstra 2 year contract...

*** Don't try arguing with me that they really are in 'series' btw...