Ok, to put you straight, my home ISP is currently VM 20Mb, and I get pretty good download speeds with that, FTPs can hit around 2.3MB/s over night, so pretty much line speed.
I also rent a server in Holland, which sits on a 100Mbit line, upstream and downstream. This server has a 160GB HDD in it, and I download to that direct. I hit speeds around 10MB/s+ on that, although my sig only shows 80Mb via speedtest.
I don't surf via Holland, although I can remote desktop into it, and use a browser if I want to [anonymous surfing, gives a Dutch IP and no need to use a proxy] - I just use FTP to transfer my files across.