$40, for 768kb/s DSL? Verizon or Earthlink, I assume? My friend Mike has the same plan and he pays $14.99 for it. $40 should be able to get you a pretty fair decent cable connection. That much money seems way high for a connection like that.
Verizon is the evilest ISP in our area. They block, like, every single port. Cable providers, such as Comcast, Optimum, etc, don't. Even with Verizon's "FiOS" crap, you STILL get your place in the Dynamic IP pool, and your $80/mo paying butt behind the wall of blocked ports. What's all the hooplah? a little more upload speed? Earthlink is somewhat the same way, blocking ports. But at least they don't block
everything like Verizon does.
...wow, was I just ranting? Sorry for hijacking

. I just really, really hate Verizon.
I, personally have Optimum Online Boost. So, I can use my VNC server, host my website, host a few game servers... all those goodies.
I'm paying $135 for cable. That's my internet, phone, and TV. I pay for 30Mb/s down, and 5Mb/s up.
FiOS? Try $135 for internet alone. For 20Mb/s down and 10-12Mb/s up? Big whoop.
And, yeah, you're paying for 768kb/s, but you'll never get that raw speed. No one ever does. I pay for 30Mb/s, the maximum download I've ever gotten?
-2.2MB/s on BitTorrent downloads.
-2MB/s on HTTP downloads.
-1.6MB/s on FTP downloads.
My friend, who has the same plan as you... all ports forwarded, UPnP, etc, same as mine...
-57kb/s down on BitTorrents
-80kb/s down on HTTP downloads
-90kb/s down on FTP downloads.
Remember that you're not the only one connected to the line that you access your internet on. Your block, your town, your state...
Notice how internet always seems to be faster really late at night? Why? Most people are asleep

.
Remember, there are 8 bits in a byte. You're only going to get about 96KB/s download speed, ever.
EDIT: Ahh, someone said it already.
...I Download loads of crap. Over the course of April, I've downloaded at least 800-950GB.