I have a screenshot somewhere of my XP machine running DU meter & Napster to show off my brand new, 2nd in my county, cable modem pulling 400KB/sec. I felt like a God.
We only had dial-up, but I "borrowed" an EGPRS phone from work. 177.6 kbps (I think) felt more than you could ever need! Making it work in Slackware Linux was a challenge.