Gigabit Internet is slower than advertised much slower

Depends on the tool being used to measure the speeds. If you review posts in the Neighbourhood, you will find a number of posts discussing internet speeds. The protocol that Telus uses appears to be multiple Streams of data in parallel. This makes sense when you consider high data rate connections are meant for multiple simultaneous users streaming data, not one user consuming The whole stream. 
I suggest finding a gigabit device, and using Speedtest as your measurement tool before looking into other solutions.