Long story short Rich (or as Roy Cooke would say) "it depends". First off, you may not even be able to get DSL in your area. DSL is dependent on how far away you are from the Central Office. The further away the slower it goes. But once you have a connection it is pretty constant bandwidth (speed).

Cable is much faster overall however you share the line with the people in your neighborhood (one group of subscribers go to a router/UBR). So at 3:00am it is BLAZING, at peak times (7-8 in the evenings) you can see a slowdown.

A second thing to think about is whether you will be running a site or an email server. Many DSL companies provide you with a static IP (usually a few extra bucks a month) where you could run your site, set up a domain, an email server etc. All the cable providers I have worked with usually forbid the use of servers and actively "ping" to check for news servers, etc. They don't want the extra traffic on the line.

To me it is analogous to a DSL company selling you a line to the internet and a cable company selling you an internet subscription. The first says "here is your connection to the internet... go at it" the second says "ok, your connected to the internet you can log on and use your browser and email.."