I'm on 2 Mbps, work at home, and spend a sizable part of each day waiting for git repos, yum, apt etc downloads. In fact, I'm typing this comment while waiting for linux.git to update.
Why not work on a machine in a datacentre that you have terminal(s) onto? Or remote desktop/Citrix if that's your bag. You can control a machine with a quad-10gigE connection from a terminal with a 9600 8N1 connection... OK so I'm exaggerating to make my point but this scenario is exactly what so-called "cloud computing" solves.
