It's pretty sweet and if it can set a standard for phones then we'll see carriers become true utilities between which customers can switch easily if they get poor service. In short, pretty awesome.
Today's carrier system kind of feels like this dinosaur, like a landline... archaic and unnecessary. With so many people travelling, changing places, changing technology etc, it makes a lot of sense to move from subscriptions to short-time payments, and eventually, pay-per second of use on the fly, directly, without an account or monthly statement, with a push payment instead of a pull payment. (digital currencies being a key element here). Anyway, getting a bit too off-topic here, but cool first move by Apple for sure!