Apple basically forced US carriers to get their act together when they shipped the iPhone 14 series as eSIM-only domestically. Sounds like the rest of the world is about to get kicked into gear.

I’m surprised the Australian iPhone 17 still isn’t esim only considering all the carriers support it already.

The major carriers perhaps, but support among the MVNOs isn't universal. Number sharing support for smart watch usage is almost non-existent among the MVNOs in Australia.

Eg. ALDI (yes, the German supermarket chain run a MVNO in Australia), have been saying esim support in the future since 2021.

In the US, the overlap between people who would buy the latest iPhones and the people who use MVNOs I would suspect is practically non existent.

The MVNOs here mostly market older, cheaper iPhones.

China Unicom was also the launch carrier for iPhone when it came out in 2007-8. It was the only carrier to support GMS channels similar to the ones in the west (China Mobile didn't, these days Apple supports chinese cell phone channels on both carriers with the same chip).