I had a chuckle at the 3.5Mbps that the wet string was getting in the article. When I first moved in to this house, I was getting around 3Mbps on ADSL. Thankfully now I'm on 100Mbps fibre (not amazing by global standards, but good by Australian standards).
That wet string would have been an upgrade for me.
ADSL tops out at ~24Mbps while VDSL can go much higher, albeit over shorter distances than ADSL