[snidely]

Hi tech companies have a failure rate even greater than restaurants. In the U.S., one or two satellite TV companies shut their doors in past years, leaving customers with expensive useless equipment. Years ago LD carrier on our landlines suddenly shut. No out of pocket loss but a hassle for a day until we switched carriers.
Years ago I was the first in my neighborhood to get DSL. In Ca. you picked your DSL provider and the connection was installed by the phone company. When the provider suddenly went out of business, the phone company wouldn't switch me to another provider (even to themselves) w.o. getting permission from my now defunct DSL company. I simply had the phone company install DSL on a second phone line we had.
The few dollars that someone loses on a defunct card is no big deal. People who whine about that need to get a life.
In the U.S. your old TV will become useless unless your buy a digital converter. Your perfectly good analogue or TDMA phone will become worthless next year.

Bottom line - anyone who buys cutting edge technology or service, especially from a small company, knows they are taking chances. You can protect yourself somewhat by buying small amounts at a time w. a credit card. You have at least some period of time to have the credit card company reverse the charge if the company goes out of business and doesn't deliver.

...mike

P.S. Last March I "crashed" a hi-tech VOIP, cell, phone conference in San Francisco and posted a quote from one of the gurus there that one or more of these intl. SIM providers would be shut down soon. ALthough I did state I didn't know the reason and was purely speculating what woud cause this, moderator Andy said I shouldn't post "rumors". (I did state that I couldn't confirm the statement this one individual made.)
Point is - obviously there are people on the inside who know more about this stuff (both technically and businesswise) than those of us here. The tech sessions there were way above my head.