Ok, so 2/2.5G chips are cheaper, 3G isn't available everywhere, hard to make a phone that works in multiple countries, carriers may be cautious about the type of deals they are signing on their best networks - there are a list of reasons.

But, if revenue is derived from page views, searches, email, etc., why wouldn't you want people surfing as quickly as possible? We've seen it with computers and broadband vs. dial-up - with few exceptions, broadband users do more things and spend more hours online than dial-up (i.e., slow network) users.

See this DigiTimes article.