iPhone on Orange - Cellular Data Network problem

I have an iPhone 3GS on the Orange UK network. It stopped being able to access the internet by any means other than wifi. 3G, Edge, GPRS - none of it worked.

I phoned Orange support - they said that a Carrier Settings update had screwed up the configuration. Normally, you can manually configure your phone in the Settings > General > Network > Cellular Data Network menu, but the Orange carrier settings update restricts your access to this.

To sort the problem, I had to do a full restore, allow the iPhone to reconnect with Orange via iTunes, but then deny the requests to update the Carrier Settings. By doing this, the Cellular Data Network menu was restored and I was able to set the APN correctly to orangeinternet (no user/pass required). Now internet could be accessed by the cellular data network again.

After a few days I did another sync with iTunes and this time when the carrier settings prompt appeared, I allowed it to update. Again, the Cellular Data Network menu was removed and although the phone continued to be able to access the internet without WIFI, I was annoyed to discover that the phone seemed to have had its MMS settings removed - it had even removed the option to send a photo as an MMS.

Before I resorted to doing another restore, I tried turning the phone off and on again - hey presto, MMS came back and all was okay again. Phew!