Well one reason I would like this is that the nano SIMs in a lot of current phones are simply too tiny to easily change while on a plane. I travel for work to several different countries and have a local SIM for each. Trying to manipulate and swap out those tiny SIMs while cramped up into an aeroplane seat sucks.

I could wait until I arrive I suppose, but it's something useful to do while you have dead time on the plane, plus there usually isn't a good place to do it when you arrive and are herded into the i

RTFA. They're not talking about phones; they're talking about assorted Internet-of-Things devices--how your toaster and your microwave talk to your Roomba.

Do you want your smart electric meter to stop talking to your electric company because they're switching network standards and don't have time to send a technician to change SIM chips in every meter in the city? With this, your meter can be reprogrammed to connect to an updated network without a service call to your house.

Of course, if someone hacks the

The point is that in many places it is not legal to put in a phone "in jail" in the first place. So if they want to get rid of physical SIM card they need a non-physical way of changing the phone to a different provider on the fly.

I'd like it as if it was just:

Settings > Networks:
Set phone network to use.
Set phone number to use (identity on the network).
Set passphrase to use (probably a key given by the network, like PUK code).
Connect to network.

Ooooo OAuth2 like would be interdasting.

Don't be silly, it is precisely that capability which the carriers want to eliminate.
There is nothing wrong with SIMs. You know when you change out your sim card that your ties with the prior carrier are interrupted. Who knows what information this scheme will provide to your prior carrier, or government monitors.

This seems more likely to provide protection for Government wire tapping than any benefit to the user.

cloud was inevitable; every network diagram I've ever seen always represented the internet as a "cloud".

I've always thought it was perfectly approrpriate too. Its a relatively opaque morphous network outside of your direct control, there's "stuff" in it, you can connect to but you don't really know what or where it is.

And cloud storage and cloud compute etc is literally moving those servers on those diagrams INTO the cloud. :)

So cloud doesn't bug me as a term at all. As a trend it offends me greatly, since

There were no "things" on the internet until recently, there were only computers.

You hit the nail on the head. With CDMA providers, unless you buy the device from them, AFAIK, they won't allow it on the network. With GSM providers, if you had an unlocked device with the proper antenna bands, it would work without issue, and just swapping the SIM did the job. No calling up and pleading for permission to use the device, just a card swap and perhaps a power cycle.

A simless device gets us back to the bad old days. With those, I have to beg/plead with the telco in order to have a device

Yup. I will never be a customer for a phone that doesn't let me use the SIM of my own choosing.

It's not even for phones - maybe some day, but not yet.

When you say "seems to," do you really mean "could possibly some day"?

That sounds more like something you're inferring than something being implied by the article.

There's nothing in the article to suggest it's going to make it's way into consumer devices just yet. It might one day, but not yet.

These exist. I use one regularly to load malware-cleaning software onto infected machines, without risking getting the thumb drive itself infected.

Your hardware lock would negate the advantage of the embedded SIM design. The reason for embedded SIM is that you can remotely change the carrier, phone#, etc. without having to physically access the device. This is intended for use in devices such as cars, machinery, etc. It is not intended for use in your phone (most people here seem to have missed that little detail). If you have to physically access the device to flip a hardware lock, you might as well just use a regular SIM.

They exist. Check Amazon.
SD cards have the same.

They make great secure boot drives.

That would still need physical access to the device, which is the problem this proposal is actually trying do away with. It might also (speculation on my part here, but doesn't seem unreasonable) run the risk of causing more problems when users brick their phones or SIMs by popping the SIM without turning off the phone.

FTFY. There are plenty of use cases where this would be an incredibly useful facility. Just because none of them personally impact on you doesn't mean this is automatically a nefarious conspi