I'll be dealing with a degraded speed... closer to dial-up
My cell provider guarantees 114kbps GPRS anywhere on surface and sea. In populated areas minimal expectance is between EDGE and UMTS, 256-384kbps, if you're in a bigger town or one of the cities you can get 1.5mbps HSDPA. In biggest cities, if you aren't on the suburbs, you can get 7.2mpbs HSDPA.
Average land line connection is 2mbps (cable, ADSL). We're talking about downstreams here only.
The pricing sucks, because i'm paying 30euros for 2mbps cable, with 30 basic TV channels and a VOIP phone connection which is free for all fixed phone, but like all other fixed phones, pricing is high if you're dialing cellular. And that package is currently the best bang for the buck.
Same speed ADSLs may come twice as cheap but they have bandwidth limits of insane 1/3/5GB.
The cellular connections are even worse...you are paying 20euros per month for a 1GB package. Regardless of it's high speed, it's functionality is limited. For instance, at the company we use that kind of connections for field work, when you need to grab something from the 'net or send an email, and you have no other choice. We don't use USB dongles or PCIMCI modems (most of them come from Huawei Tech, and are notorious for their complexity of installation and stability), we are going directly with cellphones serving as modems. Only a handful of home users use mobile internet technology.
There was a FTTH (fiber optics to the home) provider which had a package of 10/10mbps, basic phone and basic TV for 40euros/month, which was great only because of the 10mbit synchronous connection (you can host a lot of stuff from home on that link). They had a couple of customers, but were bought by a larger ISP which uses only backend optics and frontends are on copper. Needless to say, they don't offer that kind of package anymore.
It never fails to amaze me how a country with average paycheck of $1000/month can have a average price of 40 dollars for unlimited, yet slower than standard internet connection.
