The said march for FTTC then its June so difficult knowing what to believe. What about Giff Gaff £10/month unlimited internet ?

Giff Gaff use O2's network, which is by far the most congested network with the poorest 3G coverage. Still if you live in an area where there is low take up and strong 3G coverage from O2's network then it may be ok. I would however expect O2 to give priority to their own direct customers in times of congestion and I'd not be surprised if GG have some traffic management.

Some win, some lose perhaps ADSL is useless here too.

3 is absolutely flying along here today. There are three of us using the connection so I can't do a reliable speed test (the router tops out @ 7.2Meg anyway), but the pings are much lower than they were.

When the performance died before and I mistakenly blamed contention (actually, the USB dongle had failed) I tried all the other networks we can get here. None performed better than 3 Meg down or 1.5 Meg up, despite a strong signal on Orange which was the best alternative. Though of course performance is extremely localised.

Whether PAYG or contract I couldn't find any operator other than 3 prepared to provide e.g. 10GB+/mo for the same sort of money (if we use > 7GB then we just buy another £25 block of 7GB, with other operators it was a "hard cap" for the month or buying extra at a punitive price)

Closest I got was an offer from Orange which would have involved buying lots of bolt-ons and ran to well over £100/mo at the time. Only 3 seem to tolerate heavy users.

AAISP offer the 3 service as a business broadband service with a dongle, and it can have a static IP. You don't even want to know how much it costs if you burn through 10GB/mo.

I have had over 10Meg here in the past but based on my usage they are most definitely applying the traffic management. I had a usb dongle in the past with a phone sim in it but they locked it for data use so then I switched to using a phone & pdanet, which has worked flawlessly , until this weekend

This was bound to happen, the amount of data shifting through their network is phenomenal. Check out their blog.

problem with Giffgaff is that there unlimited is no longer really unlimited if you use more then 750MB each day your risking an data ban (no warning)

around where i am O2 is very good compared to Three is way over congested to the point basic phone services is an issue (phone thinks its connected to the network when its not takes about 1 min for the phones to work out that its not connected then re-connects) coverage inside houses is also an issue as well with Three as they do not overlap that masts as much as other networks do so my house for an example is an dead spot i have 3 3UK masts around me but all just in range of the house (-105 or worse touching the phone stops the internet from working) but most places i go Three just does not cut in indoors (if your out in green belt it norm works fine)

Can concur with that experience. 3 just doesn't penetrate buildings very well (low frequencies used)

As an example - a dongle upstairs near a window can hit 11Mbps. Downstairs it doesn't even get a signal.

Tried 3 for voice - really wanted it to work. No signal downstairs in the house, fine upstairs. No signal at major motorway services. "No Network" is remarkably common compared to every other network I've ever used - seems really odd in this day and age to be somewhere suburban and have no network at all.

And to back up your point O2 is a weak signal, but even though it's slow here thanks to that, it always gets some signal just about everywhere.

Three use the 2100Mhz spectrum and have turned off Orange roaming services in certain/most areas meaning that 3G signal propagation can be an issue.

3 Use the higest frequencies in use for 3g hence poor in building coverage.
2100mhz 3g all networks
1800mhz 2g orange and t mobile (plus o2 and voda)
900mhz 2g o2 and vodafone
900mhz 3g o2 (voda?) lowest 3g frequency used and best in building penetration

But it does not help three space there masts to far from each other

O2 have only just started using 900 band with the 2100mhz band (not sure what the normal band they use)