I applied for Earthlink DSL two years ago. The first two months was problematic. I was stuck at 768kb down with a monthly rate of $50 for an entire year because of the annual contract.
Applied to Charter Cable when the contract ceased. No contract needed and I can discontinue the cable service anytime I wanted. I did end up paying like $5 bucks extra per month from the regular service rate because we did not have cable service at our house. The speed was a whooping 2mb! Nice. But there was frequent downtime on a daily basis and so, I disconnected the service within a month.
I then applied to Verizon DSL for the residence and I had to sign up with an annual contract. But due to DSL competitions nationwide, the rate dropped down to $29.99 and the company boosted the down speed from 768kb to 1.5mb. Is actually nice to have that much speed all the time and no downtime. It has been 7 months with Verizon dsl and I am very satisfied with the service. And the bill comes along with the residential phone bill.