Have a look at Google's BBR congestion control algorithm [1]. This is perhaps a solved problem now (although it's still not supported on all platforms, but only the side sending the bulk of the data needs to have it).
No, BBR does deliver significant performance improvements in high packet loss links. It is designed as a general purpose algorithm (not just for high bandwidth links) - they are using it on the YouTube (and other) content servers as well as between their datacenters. I believe trying to optimise delivery of content to high loss, high latency mobile users was one of the use cases they designed for.
1. http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3022184