Internet connection single connection speeds

Hi Everyone,

I have an issue that i've been trying to get solved with my ISP for almost 12 months now.  Their final answer to me is essentially this: "We acknowledge we can't guarantee our service anymore, and we will not upgrade our infrastructure as the NBN is soon to take over anyway.." (the NBN is the new national broadband network we are getting in australia...years away from my house however...)

So, here's my issue:

Multiple simultaneous connections, i.e, torrents, or a download manager, are great, every time.... i can achieve about 2.5 - 3.0 megabytes per second.  a www.speedtest.net result will be between 20 and 30 Mbit.  BUT, for single connection things, such as youtube, foxtel on demand, streaming music and video clips, watching online episodes of missed programs, itunes downloads, internet browser downloads etc... i can only ever achieve about 30-100kb/sec.

Obviously the bandwidth is there, as i could put on 20 downloads at 100kb/sec, and they will all stay at 100kb/sec, or i could put on just 1, and it's still only 100kb/sec.

I can't switch ISP's as the FTTH is the only thing available to me.  ADSL is 8km from the exchange, and 3G reception is not good enough here.  

I've done so much research and i don't really know how to word in technical terms my issue other than using terms like "single streaming downloads vs multi streaming downloads..." which doesn't turn up much..

Is there any piece of hardware, or configuration, i could use to try and utilize the speed i have available to me for basic things like browser downloads, itunes downloads, youtube, etc.. ??

By the way .. it's not a software configuration issue, i've used over 7 computers, mixture of mac, pc, windows xp, windows 7, ie, safari, firefox, chrome, etc.....

Thanks