Was Freeserve like that, kicking you off after a certain length of time? If I remember correctly, Demon, whom I used, didn’t kick you off - is that correct?
I used to get 49 k / 33k even out here! An exceptionally thick copper line because of the extreme length, and no neighbours at all once you have done the first mile from the exchange, so exceptionally quiet in electrical noise terms and even more so at those very low frequencies so RF from radio stations not an issue as it is with ADSL in the high downstream band.