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It would be a vast improvement if they could manage to reduce most of the long runs to the nearest exchange by judicious use of fibre to the cabinet. In a small village several km from an exchange, you could improve broadband for the whole village by having the exchange end of the DSL in the local box.
It's a bit more problematic for a few houses stuck in the middle of nowhere, but they've probably got pole-mounted phone lines anyway, which could have fibre wound round them (as was done with pylons in the past, IIRC) for a lot less than the cost of digging trenches to lay cable,