Cable is not always faster than ADSL, but should be faster than DSL (there are very large discepencies between the two coasts with regards to Cable vs. DSL speeds). Both beat the hell out of Satellite with respect to ping (connect turnaround time), but pale in comparison to sat. in throughput (raw transfer speed). You will see a large advantage to Cable/DSL over satellite if you do mostly web-browsing.
Please keep in mind, just to be able to talk about this in such terms requires HUGE generalizations.
What I can tell you is that DSL will probably run through PacBell, which is a very bad thing. PacBell blows donkeys (sorry fur swearin, but is true).
AT&T is not as good as @HOME was, but is close. If you can get cable installed, you are probably better off doing just that. They will install cable internet in your house (likely for free) and many have reported recieving free basic cable tv afterwards. Cable generally doesn't require you to pay install fees or sign a term-agreement. DSL usually requires both.
They are, for the most part, similar in rates (about $40/month, less if you buy the DSL/cable modem instead of leasing it). Cable does get to charge additional fees (franchise fee, state tax fee, and a few others that will up your bill 10-15 a month).
Note that if you get a DSL provider other than PacBell, they are still using PacBell's phone lines and you are now at the mercy of both your provider and PacBell (not a good thing).
I have had only minor problems with AT&T, but have friends that had DSL installed by CruzIO (Santa Cruz area), but not running for 3 months and PacBell charged them (most of their DSL bill was PacBell's service charge through CruzIO and CruzIO was the reason they weren't up and running in the 1st place).
Overall, if you only have one choice for sat/cable/DSL, get it if you really want it. You will likely have a high fee and a low speed if this is so. (DSL is slow and expensive if you are far from a phone switch; cable is slow if everyone in your neighborhood is on at the same time - same goes for satellite).
I have a client in LosGatos who had no other option than satellite. Sunday nights he is slower than a 28.8 modem in download speed and is hardly bearable). He is too far from the phone switch to get DSL and cable service isn't offered where he is. He pays $80/month+ for service that gets no better than DSL and can get worse than a $5/month 56k modem.
All about how bad you wat it.
Hope this helps.
Oh yah - and I referred to ADSL. DSL - Synchronous Digital Subscriber Line; ADSL - Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line. DSL - equal up and download hardware speed max (that's what they say - you still can't upload past 12kB/sec, no matter what they say). ADSL allots more speed for your download (and incidentally doesn't take away from your upload...). In other words, you will get maybe 200kB/sec download with DSL and 400kB/sec with ADSL (max speeds - these are RARE). Most DSL today is ADSL. That is why ADSL can compare to cable speed (cable ~400kB/sec).
If you think you are buying something like 1 meg/sec you are confused and so is the marketing company selling the DSL. They are selling you 1Megabit of download and you think you are gonna get 1 MegaByte of download. (8 bits to a byte, so you will get roughly 1/8 of what they claim.
