Could Google save us from the tyranny of the SIM card?

From the department of "not likely to happen any time soon, but interesting nonetheless" comes this report of a Google patent that suggests that future phones could institute an auction amongst available wireless providers, each time a connection is needed.

If there's one thing worse than being a dumb pipe, it's being one that has to compete continually on price with an array of other dumb pipes.....

(This reminds me a bit of the original view of web services, where applications would in theory pick providers of XML components from a directory in the cloud, in real time. Although given that mobile commonly has 5-10 second call setup times, there's probably a bit more scope for this to work for phone calls, than if it was embedded in a enterprise app needing millisecond response).