By EU law, the vendor of the phone has to provide updates for N year. There is no such regulation for SIM cards. ( Provided by telco's ) This means the vendor of the phone, not the telco, can simply say "we did our N years of updates", rendering the phone useless as esim requires it in order to function. It's beyond the power of the telco, because it did not provide the esim. It's not a "SIM lock", it's far more devious.