That sounds like a sim fault.

One of the companies who we support firewalls for are into mobile comms - would suprise you how complicated sims are nowadays - some are like miniature computers with memory & cpu

Hhhmmmm i hope it isnt, anyway iv just rang Orange now and they have released an a statement by an operator on the phone saying that customers may be having problems sending / receiving texts and making / recieving calls so that could be the problem.