Does severe cold affect dsl/telephone line?

So I've searched around the net but haven't found any proof for or against this, but a few nights ago it was about 5-10 degrees (F) outside before windchill, and my internet literally slowed to a crawl, 10 kb/s on downloads (normally 600). Bittorrent was untouched however.. could max out my download and upload still, but any other sort of internet traffic both in and out, was crawled. I tried every troubleshooting I could short of a new modem, until people from around my area had the same exact issues I was having.

The next day it was fine, and it was about 30-40 that day with a bit of melting. The 2 days after that, all was fine still, still not THAT cold, nothing below 10. Tonight, it's back to 5 degrees outside before windchill, and the internet has randomly slowed to 10 kb/s again (with bittorrent clients still working fine). It was working fine before this severe cold set in which was a few hours ago, and I ran some errands, made dinner, came down and turned Hulu on and it was acting like I had dial-up.

So.. could the extra cold weather at night be doing this? Or at least partly?