Switching to 5 GHz instead of 2.4 GHz has made this magnitude of difference for me in the past.
Today, at home, I haven't had dedicated internet connectivity for 4 years. I log in to the xfinitywifi SSID that some of my neighbors in my apartment complex are probably broadcasting via my parents' comcast account and get good speeds. I'm on it right now and speedtest.net shows 30 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up. Plenty enough for my purposes, including Netflix.
I switch to tethering on my AT&T device if needed for 15-25 GB 4G data each month; the "unlimited" plans offered by carriers today don't provide more than 10 GB of high speed data in contrast. Not sure how much longer this setup will work, but I plan on continuing it for as long as I can; the cost savings really add up.
A side-effect of this that I've noticed is increased operational awareness on my part. Comcast MITMs any unencrypted HTTP traffic and injects in a "powered by xfinitywifi" banner that is a great reminder to not trust the network. :)
This is a great summary. I considered Twisted prior to running into some of the issues you've described, and the complexity of the framework. I ended up using gevent and have been happy its monkey-patching of the socket and related libraries.
[0] https://www.xfinity.com/support/internet/xfinity-wifi-hotspo...