This shouldn't be surprising given the massive growth that has been experienced. Mobile operators can only experiment so far with $0 pre-paid phones before hitt

This shouldn't be surprising given the massive growth that has been experienced. Mobile operators can only experiment so far with $0 pre-paid phones before hitting a wall of economic reality and/or limits of their (planned?) revenue models. Growth typically cannot continue at rapid double-digit rates. At some point, we have to be able to deal with what's already been distributed so that consumers learn to work with what they already have. Carriers have typically gravitated toward post-paid (especially in North America) because of the warm, fuzzy recurring/regular revenue figures that they can project against (investors love recurring regaularity). This resulted in carriers subsidizing handsets and attempting to shorten the upgrade cycle in the hopes of keeping customers on their post-paid plans for as long as possible. Customers can't afford to keep upgrading. Similar logic applies to pre-paid handsets. Expect to see a decline in "disposable" pre-paid phone packages, depending on how desperate your local/regional carriers become.