im in 2 minds about telstra being sold...
its better off being either private or government, not a bit of both... you cant be 1/2 pregnant
in relation to you all that are pretty far away from the exchange, have a look into internodes naked extreme.... they have stripped the dial tone off the line, and therefore have reduced latency and increased the distance that an adsl signal can be received from the exchange from approx 5 km to over 7 km. if you are happy using a VoIP service this could be a good means to get better intarwebs