My newest obsession is higher than analog bandwidth consumer connections.  There are several new offerings from the phone systems to the TV programming-like offerings.

Cable modems are the highest speed option I have found yet (look in this find link frequently if you are interested since new information is available daily).   For the area where I used to live, click here to see what is available from Optimum Cablevision along these lines.  You should look for Comcast and Time Warner offerings as well, as these companies are all leading the charge to bring bandwidth hundreds of times faster than ISDN to each home.

Here is some info about the slowest of the TV-oriented offerings.  DirecDuo is a Hughes Network Systems product that allows your dish to let your TV and your puter party with fidelity and speed.  The only thing you have to watch for is that performance can suffer during thick overcast and cloudy weather.  Sometimes you can just forget about it in the rain or snow.  Also this is not nearly as fast as cable modems.

Another interesting product I learned about in Phoenix (thanks for the link, Nick!) is public DSL.  This is a local offering in Phoenix from US West, but I expect as demand for bandwidth increases, this will be offered on a more widespread basis.  My own ADSL service is provided by my local telephone company, and while it took some time to get the nasty kinks out of the process, I finally did get it all worked out.