The longer a wire is, the less bandwidth it can carry, and that translates to slower speed for you. Two wires could be equally long, but one could be worse than the other. The local loop is a pair of wires that run between your house and the nearest TELCO switching office (CO).
There is almost nothing you can do to get the TELCO to upgrade their wires. Your local or state government may have some regulatory power, but they are often more interested in holding costs down than in improving quality.
Cable coax has a lot more bandwidth than a TELCO local loop. And the cable company often runs fiber optic cable as far as the closest pole to your house. Unfortunately, the cable company often pools bandwidth among a pool of customers that share a single cable.
If you can afford it, you may get better service on a data link to the nearest cell tower.
YMVV. In my location, TELCO DSL is fast enough for my purposes, cheap enough, and service has been pretty good so far. Quality varies widely from location to location.