Debt Settlement or Consumer Credit Counseling ...

That depends on the individuals situation.  Debt settlement is a last step before bankruptcy and requires lump sum payments to be made to creditors.  It can be quite fast if you have the resources to pay off your debts at up to 60% less.

Consumer Credit Counseling
After signing up for this type of debt relief through a consumer credit counseling agency, representatives will contact your various creditors in an attempt to get your interest rates reduced. In most instances consumer credit counseling agencies do successfully get your rates reduced, but oftentimes the rate of reduction is not significant; it is, however a reduction nonetheless.
You will begin making just one payment, which will be directed to the consumer credit counseling service that you hire, and they will subsequently distribute your monthly payments to your creditors. Your new monthly payment is typically lower than what you were paying when you were making regular payments to each individual creditor.

Debt Settlement
Debt settlement differs from consumer credit counseling, in that it is intended to eliminate your debt much quicker, and also significantly reduce your overall debt amount by approximately 50%. Typically consumers choose debt settlement when they simply can no longer keep up with their monthly payments, and have decided to attempt to pay their creditors at least something, as opposed to filing for bankruptcy.

And so from the above explanations it is quiet clear that Debt Settlement can be of great help to reduce the debts quickly than credit counseling service.

Thats a very nice explanation given by jerome above. Even I have the opinion that Debt Settlement is a better alternative that Credit counseling and you can eventually reduce your debts to 50-60% as well. 

From what I understand, debt settlement is only good IF you have the money to pay off the debt.  How can you settle the debt at 50% if you do not have money?

There are many companies that will help with this and what they do is set up an account that you make deposits to and once you have enough in there to pay off a creditor then they try to settle the debt with them.  The creditors of course can still take you to court for not paying while you wait for your account to build up enough to settle the debt.  I think it best that you talk to a professional debt consolidation service to work a a plan that is best for your situation.