Instead of making deals with oil-rich countries...
Vodafone would do well to see that their network fully supports 2G phones. As of 11am Sunday 9/9/2012, there is no service for 2G phones across the country and they seem reluctant to do anything about it. They just keep saying the same nonsense - remove your SIM, wait for 30 minutes, then try again. This is not solving the problem. See http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Network/bd-p/usingnetwork for all the posts so far! It seems this problem has crept in over the past week.