3G reception problem when abroad

My iPhone 3G has worked flawlessly since I got it, with no 3G reception issues whatsoever (I'm from the UK).
I am currently in Bulgaria on holiday, and when I got here I noticed I had "No Service", but my girlfriend (who has a Samsung on O2) had full signal with M-Tel.
I looked under Settings > Carriers and seen lots of Bulgarian carriers listed, both 3G and 2G, but no matter which one I select I get a message about "Restricted Network. Your selected cellular network is restricted." Restricted. However if I turn 3G off, I get all the 2G Bulgarian carriers just fine, full signal.
Any ideas?

I have consistent 3G reception problems in faraway Tasmania, using iPhone 3G 16GB. The 3G network I'm on is 850MHz UMTS known as NextG provided by Telstra.
Drop outs on 3G, generally poor reception and dramatically increased 3G battery life have forced me to turn it off and use GSM/EDGE exclusively (GSM uses almost the same 900MHz frequency spectrum here in Australia, so performance is not being squewed by that).
Here is a test as an example:
I positioned the iPhone so that it was 6k away in direct unobstructed line-of-site from our only Telstra tower (the only telco we have in our region)
According to the ACMA database our Telstra tower has almost identical power output on both GSM and NextG at 28 and 32 watts respectively.
Of course the transmit antennas on the tower for each of those services can't both be in identical positions, which is the only thing I can think of that might account for the differences in measurements.
Checked the number of bars signal strength and the dBm Field Strength readings for both NextG and GSM and here are the results:
GSM: full 5 bars and field strength of -81dBm
NextG: only 2 bars and field strength of -98dBm
The actual practical performance of the phone pretty much is in accordance with those figures, so I suffer regular drop outs or no service at all on NextG while GSM is rock solid.
There is no question of tower overload as there are only 30 or so residents served by that tower with little road traffic.
I'm disappointed by the poor NextG performance which is pretty ordinary everywhere I go and I'm even more disappointed at the dramatic decrease in battery life when NextG is turned on.
Keeping NextG turned off seems to be the only solution and that is not good.
For those who want to try the same, you get Field Test mode by dialling 3001#12345#
Our local Telstra tower is this one: http://web.acma.gov.au/pls/radcom/assignmentsearch.lookup?pACCESS_ID=9330165&pDEVICEID=3046541

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