yes, there you right. its the contract you pay for. so it is not completely for free: no device is. but /if/ you do a contract, you pay for that contract. if you want you get some hardware on top of it. that other guy said, that was not possible with the n900 like it is with other devices. reality proves him wrong. it's just like with other devices. you pay for the contract and you get a device as "bait", if you want so, to do the contract.

and yes: you are also correct that there are regional differences as to which degree it is available. there are even some networks the n900 does not work with. please i didn't argue against that and didn't say it is available everywhere.

but all that has nothing to do with, like the other stated, that it cannot be given for "free" as "bait" for a contract ... that they do(e.g. make a vodafone contract and get among others also a n900 an top, or make a o2 contract and get among others a n900 on top. ).

EDIT: and this is in contrary to the iphone e.g. which was locked to some supported providers. so you couldn't use it as bait for a contract if the provider was not supported(can't use the phone with the provider for it was locked to only a few). that was an issue when the iphone came up a couple of years ago.