In Poland we had free data plans for a couple years now from company called Aero2 - they won the right to use a certain frequency,but only under the guarantee that they would offer free data usage on their network to everyone(for up to 5 years I think?). So I know a lot of people who bought cheap 3G modems and got their simcard with Aero2 just to have free internet at home, there are no usage limitations, except for the speed limitation(is limited up to 5mbps)). There is no contract either, you order the simcard online and can use it straight away.
There used to be no usage limitations except the 512Kb/s speed limit mandated by the regulator but later they introduced session length limits (60 minutes) and started requiring captchas on every connect. It's not very convenient or useful any more.
Just in case any entrepreneurs are reading this, I could live with that.
Such a package would also help my students a lot as well. We can probably find refurbished laptops from local recyclers the issue has always been the cost and faff factor of an Internet connection. A 3G mobile Internet pay as you go dongle is affordable now and again (£2 per 24 hour period, £4 for 3 days &c with low download caps for streaming content) but not all the time.
UK: I currently use a stunningly unreliable broadband connection which is around 6km from the local exchange, itself getting on in years but not scheduled for replacement. I have to pay a line rental and then a monthly fee for a broadband package on-top of that. About 2 miles from here they have fibre-to-cabinet and download speeds that max out the wifi card in my old Thinkpad (around 3Mbytes/sec).
A reliable half megabit even would be fine for remote desktop and email and wasting time on forums. I do big downloads from local cafe anyway because of the frustration factor.
