Very interesting analysis. By the virtue of the crazy business we've decided to be in (creating a mobile optimized, reliable protocol over UDP), we've had some experience with this... over mobile networks. I can confirm that sending packets at a slow and steady rate, with proper packet pacing (this is all being done by our user level protocol stack using UDP as the underlying datagram sending transport), we commonly see 0% packet loss.
Of course, some of the actual packet loss at the media level is often being masked by the media protocol itself. That's why you'd often see cases where a packet meanders it's way to the destination after 4-5x the normally observed ping latency. This sort of stuff plays havoc with TCP congestion control algorithms (because by then, TCP send side has already decided that the packet is lost and it can only be due to congestion... so it backs the heck off). A lot of our win comes because of doing these things more in tune with how mobile networks actually behave.
Of course, some of the actual packet loss at the media level is often being masked by the media protocol itself. That's why you'd often see cases where a packet meanders it's way to the destination after 4-5x the normally observed ping latency. This sort of stuff plays havoc with TCP congestion control algorithms (because by then, TCP send side has already decided that the packet is lost and it can only be due to congestion... so it backs the heck off). A lot of our win comes because of doing these things more in tune with how mobile networks actually behave.