David said:
Your connection speeds on telco lines are usually a function of how close you are to the telephone company's equipment. Signal quality degrades with distance over copper twisted pairs. Same applies to DSL. That's the #1 reason most people can't get DSL--too far from the man's gear.
The condition of the wiring in your house can also have a big impact on performance.
Yep. And living right next to the sub-station is why I get awesome speeds with DSL. My mom has cable at her house and her internet service, though rated at a higher speed, has significantly more lag and load time than my DSL (even after its initially fired up). With that in mind, as long as I live where I do now, I'm sticking with DSL and saying to hell with cable.
I also have DSL because I'm too broke for cable and have more reasons to pay for a hard phone line than for cable TV.
Tonio, I'd have to agree with the others and say that your only hope would be one of the satellite internet providers. I know there's more than just DirecWay. I believe my old roommates had a one-way system with DirectPC which wasn't too bad. Download was awesome, but there was a bit of lag due to the dial-up uploads.