Have to admit, I had no idea what the actual speed is, but a quick check reveals that it's somewhere in the 28-56kbps range - so pretty much like dial up internet. Not the greatest, but a tradeoff for convenience I guess.

Of course you can resort to a couple of tricks to speed your viewing - e.g. BBC News has a low graphics version, which makes for quick loading, and on our very own FT, the archives are much faster to load than the live site (similarly because of reduced graphics). Downside of the archives is that you can't post - so fine for browsing, useless for posting.

I've often wondered if there was a market for "Mobile-FT" - where there were no adverts/graphics, but with the posting capabilities which archives don't offer. I'd readily pay $50 a year or so to help negate the impact of lost ad revenues.