Also you are still paying them the money?
My touch HD is on a 12 month T-Mobile. I frequently put in a foriegn sim card (i've got quite a collection of pre-pay now
) when abroad. As i seldom spend over my monthly £35, its not as if they miss out on money by people doing that.
The thing is with the phones there are hundreads of other handsets available which aren't locked in the same silly way.