[Bushbasher]

Interesting you should say that Simple6 as I was starting to come around to that theory myself about the frequency thing but your idea that they have only activated it on a certain frequency is looking like something that need investigating as well. After I gave up on the T7 I dragged another old blue tick phone out, that being a Samsung A411 and had it unlocked thinking there was a problem with the T7 but it did exactly the same thing. After further discussions with Dodo they then told me there was no coverage where I am yet the bloke across the road is on Optus mobile broadband and has no problems and the bloke round the corner is on Dodo and is using an unlocked Vodaphone Samsung smart phone and gets a signal no problem, in fact he's been at my front door talking on his phone so I know there is coverage here. To back up the frequency theory, yesterday I took the Samsung into town with me and put it on manual search for networks and even sitting outside the post office it wouldn't find the Optus network, only the Telstra and Vodaphone network. Today I'm back in town for the kids sport so I'll take both phones and see if I can't detect the Optus network. If they won't then, logically, they can't be on the right frequency. Either that or I'm the unluckiest bloke alive to have 2 different brand phones bought at different times and places that both have faults- not likely though.
I refuse to believe that a 5 yr old phone is suddeny unable to detect a 3G network, there has to be something else going on here, I just can't figure out quite what yet.