Are you saying if you use physical SIM from AT&T on those iPads, the problem would suddenly go away? I thought regardless which kind of SIM you use, when a device joins the carrier's network, they have to identify itself with EID (or something equivalent). If AT&T has a block on that ID, why would the kind of SIM matter?

If there is a specific law forbidding carriers to put any kind of block on a device using only physical SIM, but not if eSIM, I'll be interested to know that law. And if that's the case, wouldn't it be obvious that because eSIM is a relatively new thing, the law is just lagging behind, not that eSIM inherently a bad thing?