The U.K.'s largest 3G network provider, 3, plans to glue its SIM cards into entry-level prepay handsets to prevent phone exporters from selling them abroad for profit. The SIM cards are being permanently bonded into handsets using epoxy resin. Europe's mobile operators lock handsets to their networks so they don't lose money when a subscriber takes that cheap phone and moves to another network, but people unlock them anyway. In fact, 3 has taken a hard stance on this practice in Italy by having these phone-unlockers arrested. Gluing SIM cards into the phone doesn't sound like a reasonable answer since the beauty of a SIM card is to allow customers to transfer their information into multiple phones.
For more about 3's moves to glue SIM cards:
- take a look at this article from mobileburn.com