Subsidy code i have a phone from the uk i bought the phone under the pre paid orange network... i moved back th south africa and with a south african sim card it requests a subsidy code

Phones are locked to their carrier so you cannot switch carriers with that phone. The subsidy code is a code that will unlock the phone so it can be used on different carriers. You can get that code from the previous carrier if they are nice enough. But most won't because you are not a customer anymore. Here is a way i recommended a T-mobile customer to get their phone unlocked for cingular.:

There are a couple of ways to do this, one is completely safe and the other is fairly safe, but may require you to mail the phone in to someone to have this done.

The best way is if you are still a T-Mobile customer, to call them and have some good reason to use it on a different carrier. The best excuse is that you will be traveling overseas and want to use carriers there so the calls will be cheaper. Do not let on that you will be switching carriers. They did my Razr for me and it took about 3 days for the code. When you call customer service, just tell them that you want to submit a sim unlock request. They will transfer you to a different department. They will gather info (like the phones serial number) and will email you the unlock code. Their website says that they will only unlock one phone per account every 90 days. But they unlocked 2 phones for me in the same phone call (both were razr's). Once you unlock it it can be used on any carrier except Verizon and Sprint (different technologies). Then just switch carriers. For more info on this you can go to T-Mobile.com and type in "sim unlock request" in the search box.

The other way, which may include mailing your phone to a stranger is having someone unlock it for you. There are services on-line that will do this. Some can do it without mailing the phone to them. But some require you to mail it to them so they can unlock it with a cable instead of the code. The usual cost is about $20.00

But the best way if you are not with T-Mobile anymore is to call around to authorized retailers and ask if the unlock phones. Some do it for about $20 (but no mailing it in risk) and some do it for free is you sign up to a new carrier through them. They want your business any way they can get it.