... on the right network, with the right handset (in my case, T-mobile and a recent HTC smartphone), the browsing experience is generally very good at the moment. It may well be fundamentally technically broken (see first post), but it seems to work fine in spite of that.

Perhaps once the capacity issues start to become a problem in the real world, as user numbers increase, technology will have moved on. Already, HSDPA is starting to roll out with 7.2Mb/s, with 14.4 on the way in due course ... so the total bandwidth shared out in a given UMTS cell is increasing, which will help. Then there's femtocells, wifi hotspots in heavy-use areas, .....