I've heard from two different people in the business now that U's days are numbered - their customer acquisition has been too slow and too expensive and they are bleeding money.

Too bad, I guess they never really came up with anything innovative or different to draw customers away from the incumbents.

And since they don't have their own infrastructure, they can't cheaply do the obvious thing that second-generation players do to build up market share: permanent offer of unlimited free calls between U-Mobile subscribers.

I would have expected them to at least offer international calling at loss-leader rates, but they didn't do that either. Instead they focused on hiring really pushy salespeople who pissed off potential customers.