Not only expensive, the coverage is spotty too. Driving cross country, even along major highways often results in many dead spots.

It's _really_ hard to come up with a coherent theory of European telecom pricing; it is just all over the place. For instance, Ireland is more expensive than the UK thing... So it's a density thing, right? Not so fast; Germany (denser than Ireland) is also more expensive than Ireland... There are some general _trends_, but big exceptions to all of them.

It’s not anymore. For 30-50€ you can get more or less unlimited data plans on all three networks