His connection is terrible because he lives up in the Blue Ridge of Tennessee. There is no broadband there and I wouldn't be surprised if the phone lines are poor enough that you can't connect at more then 28.8k on a good day.
To clarify, there is broadband up here in hills, but it is very unevenly distributed.
I lived near the top of a mountain in the same area, and was finally able to get cable after pestering Comcast for a few years.
The guy that bought the land at the very top of the hill was unable to get Comcast to run cable even with his offer to pay for the run himself. We cut down some trees for line of sight and re-purposed some satellite equipment and got him online via a second cable run to my house.
