It's very odd here too. They have been so keen to buy up market share that you could get an post-pay contract of 500 minutes a month for only a few pounds a year after cashback of most of the dealer commission. So I can't understand why they think prepay will be popular. I will be on pre-pay when my contract ends in a few days, but I don't expect to use it
It is sometimes expensive to unlock the phones. Some people recently cancelled contracts early when 3 proposed that calls after the 500 minutes would cost 10p instead of 5p, but they then found that some new Nokias cannot be code unlocked yet, and 3 were not helping. Mine is a 7600 and I've already done it for free.
I wonder about their speed at building the network. At my house Orange has better 3g coverage, and my 3 phone roamed on O2 2g as there was no 3 coverage. Recently 3 contracted the network out to Ericsson (like Italy it seems), much of the UK CS is in India, they don't have their own shops but in Superdrug which is owned by Hutchison, so there isn't much body to the company itselff
I can't understand why Hutchison ever sold Orange if they were that keen to be in the market.
I've just read about some skeptical responses, or maybe cynical or funny ones - read about Romanian students
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/25/wepay_readers/