Personally I'm a big supporter of SIM cards. While competing network systems (CDMA, iDEN) were designed to lock in networks and users to a single vendor, GSM was designed by a consortium of european national telecoms at every single layer to ensure that all the stakeholders (users, telecoms, regulators) had as much interoperability and freedom as possible, and SIM cards are the user's end of that plan.
If Apple implemented his proposal, you can bet iPhone users would only be able to pick special overpriced iPhone plans, instead of just using whatever prepaid plan they want.
They tried: http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/05/24/apple-wanted-to-...
Personally I'm a big supporter of SIM cards. While competing network systems (CDMA, iDEN) were designed to lock in networks and users to a single vendor, GSM was designed by a consortium of european national telecoms at every single layer to ensure that all the stakeholders (users, telecoms, regulators) had as much interoperability and freedom as possible, and SIM cards are the user's end of that plan.
If Apple implemented his proposal, you can bet iPhone users would only be able to pick special overpriced iPhone plans, instead of just using whatever prepaid plan they want.