wow giga, those are really shitty rates for a cable connection. I\'ve had my cable for about 4 months now and I generally download between 150k - 400k sec (depending on time of day) and I ping usually below 50ms, some times between 50-75 during peak times. All this for $45 a month... which isn\'t that bad.
Overall though I love cable and I just can never go back to dial-up