Obviously can't reply to your post, but no VPN here, I'm in the U.K. :)

Your IP address (actually both you've used to connect here at the forum) says you're in Saltzberg, Austria. If you aren't then you're going to want to talk to your ISP about having that sorted out because that's why you're getting 48kbps.

A small point....

I do know not to ask questions about access from outside the UK, but where are the forum rules that explain this?

Searching back, there's a link to /topic/forum-rules/ but that gives a 404 error.

Search for "forum rules", or just look at the top of each forum thread listing page.

Forget the search - only locates old rules page, now missing.

EDIT: Re-posted forum rules in new thread, so now found in search results