My Finacee and I used to live on a farm just north of Bristol where the broadband options were pretty slim. While my friend in a town closer to London was getting 70Mb/s downstream, we were only offered 0.5Mb/s. I ended up getting a 3G dongle with a wireless 3G router and using HSPA+ on the three.co.uk network and we regularly managed speeds of around 7Mb/s (around 14x faster than we would have got if we used the phone line).
We moved, this weekend, to a town closer to London, and I have left the dongle with the new tennants at the farm. I am currently researching what ISP I should go with. While looking at an ISP that I had been recommended (because of their technical expertise and support) I noticed a link to an article about the web censorship we are currently facing in the UK, and the reason that they do not censor on their network.
It was not news to me, but I found it an interesting read anyway.