I've had DSL off the local phone company for about a year.

Fee was based on different bandwidths to be provided over the connection, I took something slower but still much faster than dial up.

Be careful to see if there is a download limit. The cable providers in my area have a surcharge if one downloads too much within a month (by download I'm not necessarily talking about movies or files, but net exchange of information, including emails and forum messages). This can result in surcharges over busy months. The local DSL has no download surcharge.

In my case there was no basic home site such as Yahoo that had to be used. A base email address was set up through the provider but I was not limited to it.

My local phone company charged me for a year when I was not using the service, so stay on top of your phone bill.

The little filters which allow one to isolate your internet connection from your phone use over the same line worked fine for me.