I’ve been running Mobile Broadband for  well over 2 years in the UK now. Ever since 3G traffic became widely available which was about 2 years ago.
The early claims of ‘Super-Fast Mobile Broadband as fast as most Landlines’ was  a misconstrued statement, with only the major cities in the UK offering a 3G cloud and the possibility of speeds better than a dial-up modem.

I was living on the outskirts of York at the time and although I had a landline BT couldn’t provide enough steam to push ADSL to me (I was the last house in York it would appear)
So after a few months of fighting my case with BT I eventually got all of my money back from them, terminated my relationship with anything cabled,  and decided to give T-Moblie’s Mobile Broadband a go.
Again, over-priced and over promoted, I managed to get an average of about 750k (they were promoting it as speeds up to 3.6mb) still, it worked and for what I needed it did it’s job.

12 months later when the contract was up I decided to give Vodaphone’s Mobile Broadband a go. A cheaper price and faster speeds were again the lure however neither we’re met. The Vodaphone Mobile Broadband experience was absolutely dreadful and I was lucky to even get dial-up speeds.
So I sharply canned that after 1 month and moved onto Hutchison’s 3 Network.
I’d always heard such bad things about 3 but I’d been running a 3 Skype phone bundle for £12 a month which I had no problems with at all so it was definitely worth giving their Mobile Broadband a go.

And here I am, 12 months on and still more than satisfied with my 3 Mobile Broadband solution. For £11 a month I get a 5GB data allowance and a pretty steady 2mb pipe no matter where I am. More than enough for me as I have no requirement or desire to download anything of any size from the internet other than software updates for the Mac and my collection of Media apps.
£11 a month for my Internet requirement I think is reasonable and something that even a tramp could afford.
12 months on from now and who knows… with HSPA+ slowly making it’s way into society my humble £11 could soon be for a 42mb Wireless pipe. God knows what I’d do with that.