I'm on 'mobile broadband' in a city of 1 million in the UK midlands. That's where you pay a monthly fee and get a mains powered router pod that connects itself to the vendor's G4 mobile network. Several companies offer this.
I ditched my landline phone and pay just under £15 a month. Works fine. Easily saturates the wifi card on my old Thinkpad at the same time as her indoors is watching Emmerdale over the same connection.
Happy customer (at the moment, mergers in the pipeline).