Dont know about the mile thing, but I can bring another anecdote - modem speeds and breaking 33.6Kbit barrier on ~3.5KHz BW limited wires.
Oral History of Brent Townshend (inventor of 56Kbit PCM modem mode) [Computer History Museum] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqudP6ojEDI&t=6049. Transcript:
they've been trying to get modems to go
faster and there's this whole thing called
shannon information theory which says theoretically given
all the parameters of that copper line
and what's going on that the maximum
speed would be 35 kilobits per second
you can't go faster than that it was
theory they're you know 95 percent of the way to the theoretical
limit and michael had this engineer that
worked with him andy norrell which is like a
genius engineer um he's really amazing
understands modems and everything perfectly and
and michael recounted you know every six
months or so you talk to andy and say
you know you're sure there's no way that
we can go faster andy would say
no you can't go faster than that
this is the limit there's not any way
and so so michael was on the phone with
me and i said i have a way of going
faster and you know well you know a lot
of people think so but we think it's
max p and i say well i've got these
credentials i've been working at Bell Labs
he said wait a second i got to get somebody
else in the room too i get andy and you know
andy comes in on the conference call
and michael asking you know is there
any way to go faster than 33 he says no
35 is the limit and you know theoretically
and i said well you can do it like this you
know i say in like three sentences you
could do this and this and this
and then he says oh yeah that would work