Is it normal for new customers to have really slow speeds initially?

[#1]

Seems like the problem fixed itself overnight! Did a test this morning and got ~10Mb/s download speeds.
My upload speed, however, fell slightly to 0.27Mb/s.
I'm really happy with how the download connection fixed itself.
BTW, is an upload IP profile of 0.45Mb/s normal? Seems really slow now that I think about it. I don't see myself uploading very much but the disparity between upload and download speeds looks a lot.
Anyway, thanks everyone for your helpful suggestions

[#2]

.45 upload is standard on 20cn (adsl1), 21cn (or adsl2) has a higher rate, but is not initially set up to use it, you have to request your upload be uncapped, and even then you can only get up to 1mbit upload.
Still, since you can get it for free, you might as well have it if you have the option.

[#3]

The most likely explanation for the problem was that your computer was undertaking some sort of background updating process whilst you ran the initial tests.  So the background process was using all your bandwidth.