DSL is a distance sensitive dedicated line service that's been around since the early 1990s when most of us were still on dialup Internet service. The good thing about it is that you don't share access to the DSLAM (DSL Access Mux) with your neighbor like you do with a cable modem solution. The bad part is that DSL performance degrades as the length of the copper line from your home to the DSLAM gets longer. The DSLAMs are typically located in the central office of your phone company. However to increase the number of potential customers to which they could sell, telcos in metropolitan areas began to remote the DSLAMs closer to concentrations of homes in neighborhood equipment bays. I'm located in a rural area so I'm stuck with .75Mbps up and 1.5Mbps down. Still works OK with my AVOV boxes, but can't wait to move into our new home on the same property which will have fiber into my basement equipment room. I'll immediately be able to convert to 5Mbps for the same price I get 1.5 today.
Apologies if this hit you as a hijack. My job for a major computer hardware maker in 1991 was to move 1000 U.S. salespeople to offices in their homes using DSL from a now defunct company called Rhythms based in Denver. It was an early adoption of the technology and painful to implement, but very exciting at the time.