Way back when, I worked for an ISP that provisioned business class RADSL service in Canada. We had several customers in the 5+ km range, simply because they had a heavier gauge of copper running to their house. Older/rural exchanges there tended to be run on heavier lines, which had less signal attenuation. The same thing may be the case here, explaining why your brother's neighbour was able to have working DSL at that distance.
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