That must be a US thing. Any time I've gotten a new phone (be it iPhone -> iPhone, iPhone -> Android or Android -> iPhone or even Sony Ericsson -> Sony Ericsson

That must be a US thing. Any time I've gotten a new phone (be it iPhone -> iPhone, iPhone -> Android or Android -> iPhone or even Sony Ericsson -> Sony Ericsson back in the day) I've just popped out the SIM from the old phone and put it in the new. The most recent was iPhone 7 -> iPhone 12 and it just worked then as usual. The only exception is when they've moved to a physically smaller SIM card format.