Bird, you can thank your local Phone company for your slow connect speeds. When your connecting via your 56k modem on their infrastructre, depending on your location AND your ISP's, relative to their switching hubs, your connection may need to be converted to digital from analog and back again. Each time this 'switching' occurs, your connect speeds die on the vine.
Usually a call to your ISP will only result in their blaming the phone company and will not actually be able to add any solutions.
The only real solution is to look for another ISP, and before signing on the line, tell them that you want to test drive their service before agreeing on an account opening. That way, you can see if the connections they are going to provide get 'switched' too many times (as you are experiencing now) resulting in slow connect speeds or .. if they are an improvement.
Its FUN FUN FUN chaning email addresses too!
I'll shshshs now.