Broadband Speed

I'm with Orange and pay quite a lot of mney per month for 8MB Broadband but never get it. When I test it is a max of 500bps. I telephioned them to complain and they stated that my phone extension line was too long, I should shorten it. As this is not possible as the socket is down stairs and the office upstairs would it be an aswer better to get a wireless Broaband Router down stairs ? I've used Broadband for years but don't know much about it. The other thing is if I have an ordinary telephone socket is it possible to get this uprated to the new type (private company not BT), don't know what they are called but expect every one else does.

What ADSL modem? What stats does it give?

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php will give an idea how to get the stats, copy/paste these back into another post and we can then make a more useful comment.

One quick possibility is that if the downstream connection speed in the router is 576Kbps and the upstream is 288Kbps, then you are on a fixed speed product and not an up to 8Meg product.