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Demystifying ESIM Technology [video]
- anderspitman 3y agoI've had a great experience with eSIMs these past few days during a trip to Europe (coming from the US). It's so convenient to be able to arrive at a city and use airport wifi to download a mobile data package for a few bucks. The process is slightly clunky but not bad at all.
- wkat4242 3y agoI'm in Europe and I've had very poor experiences with local carriers in getting an eSIM :( Most of them outright refuse unless you are on a mobile contract plan with them (I'm not, I hate contracts so I only use prepay). On prepay they don't want to support it here in Spain for whatever stupid reason even though I've had my prepay number for 10 years. They also levy much more restrictions on the whole ordeal: Usually only locally sold models are allowed. So you can't use a Dutch Samsung phone with a Spanish eSIM. I'm really annoyed with this because the whole idea of eSIM was to make things easier for the customer, not harder and more restrictive. Perhaps the carriers that specialise in temporary data contracts for travelers are ok, but local permanent carriers are crap with this.
- raincom 3y agoPeople use Airalo app to buy eSIMs, wherever they travel to. One can buy eSIM even before you land in foreign lands. I don't have experience with Airalo, but many recommended that app on this site.
- wkat4242 3y agoAh ok, but that's only for temporary use, it's not intended for real permanent usage, right? I'll consider it if I ever travel outside of europe though (roaming inside EU was fixed several years ago luckily).
- yosito 3y agoWhat makes you think it's for temporary use? I've been using it for over a year as my only data plan.
- kiwijamo 3y agoIs the price cheap enough to do that? Last time I looked it was much cheaper to go with a local carrier almost anywhere I looked.
- yosito 3y agoCheap is relative. I pay about $25 for 20GB, which lasts me a month. Yeah, local SIM cards might have cheaper options, but I'm not complaining about $25 a month. I spend more on a single lunch.
- markdown 3y agoThe cost. The prices are very high.
- yosito 3y agoI don't consider $25 for 20GB to be "very high". Of course, you can find cheaper. But $25 is less than a lunch in most places.
- 3np 3y agoA lunch is most definitely not close to as high as $25 "in most places" unless you go for upscale fine dining, considering that $25 is above global daily median income.
- raincom 3y agoFor instance, Eurolink eSIM card with 180 days validity can be had for 180 euros on Airalo.com. They also have re-chargeable eSIMs, just you need to top up just before it expires.
- vladvasiliu 3y ago> the whole idea of eSIM was to make things easier for the customer, not harder and more restrictive. I remember reading an article in a French newspaper about how carriers were "uncomfortable" with the eSIM because it severed "the last connection" between them and their customers. The latter would basically no longer have a reason to "interact" with the former. I don't quite see how that's a bad thing. The less you have to deal with "those people" (and this works from either side), the better it is, no? In my case, the last time I've "interacted" with my carrier was some 10 years ago when my phone got stolen, and I had to get a new SIM. Other than that, I pay them every month and they make sure my phone works every month. At least with my carrier, it's cheaper to get an eSIM than a physical SIM. I didn't actually get one, since I've had my current SIM for a very long time. They basically charge for the "SIM service", and there's a separate charge for the physical part if you get it in a brick & mortar store, or for shipping if you want it delivered. > Usually only locally sold models are allowed. How can they tell, are there still country-specific models? I know people from the US and from Russia coming to France, popping a local SIM in and being in business. These were all iPhones, though.
- Nextgrid 3y ago> I don't quite see how that's a bad thing But how is the carrier going to "engage" you? How are all the people involved in sales and marketing there going to justify their job? A carrier that operates fully automatically with minimal customer interaction could indeed be more profitable, but it's politically impossible for any established company to transition to such a model since it would obviate the need for many positions there - those same positions rely on the current status-quo (no matter how mediocre) and will fight any attempts at improving efficiency. (this is not limited to carriers, any large legacy company has the same issues - lots of positions are just there to create work to sustain other, equally-useless positions, while the new output of the system being zero or even negative).
- mschuster91 3y ago> The less you have to deal with "those people" (and this works from either side), the better it is, no? The less contact, the less opportunity to upsell you to something that provides them recurring revenue. It's all about rent seeking ("passive income") these days, everywhere.
- ranma42 3y agoVodafone in Germany was happy to give me an eSIM for a prepaid plan, not even a store visit required (but it did require taking a photo of my ID and a identity verification video call where someone checks your video against the ID). I guess with AI-based video manipulation, a store visit may be required in the future...
- Nextgrid 3y ago> a store visit may be required in the future... Or not, considering how store employees are treated and paid. It's probably much cheaper to bribe some low-level clerk than build & deploy a convincing AI spoofing solution.
- someotherperson 3y agoThey’re very useful. Although it’s sometimes hard to get eSIMs direct from carriers internationally since many only grant them on post-paid contracts. SIM cards also have their place, however, which is why Apple’s take on it is weird. When traveling, especially with so much MFA (for better or worse) is linked to a phone number, it makes having your phone damaged a major issue. You can’t simply pop out the SIM and move it across to a new phone. Even if you manage to get a new eSIM, most of the time you can’t activate it until you’re back in your origin country. This as an issue (carrier or otherwise) needs to be addressed with some urgency.
- wkat4242 3y ago> They’re very useful. Although it’s sometimes hard to get eSIMs direct from carriers internationally since many only grant them on post-paid contracts. Exactly, this is a huge problem for me because I don't do post-paid (after one bill with unintended overage charges, I much prefer them just cutting me off until I pay again). The sim swapping being controlled by the provider (every time you need a new QR and they need to 'grant' it to you) is more restrictive too, and they usually enforce only models they sell directly. It's a real loss of flexibility that we used to have with hardware SIMs.
- housemusicfan 3y agoThis can easily be resolved by not buying an Apple phone and buying a phone that still retains a physical SIM slot. Stop giving companies money for making stupid decisions. It only emboldens them further.
- wkat4242 3y agoThe Samsung Z Flip 5 has this too :( Only 1 real SIM and the rest only eSIM. However it is a bit more understandable because the flip has very limited space due to the hinge components.
- housemusicfan 3y agoThe USA versions of Apple's flagship phones (iPhone 14 and up) have ZERO physical SIM slots. They are dual eSIM only. Models sold elsewhere in the world retain a single physical SIM slot. Yes you read that correctly. They made multiple versions and the American one is deliberately crippled. I'm certain the space regained by removing the SIM slot in a US-only variant has been repurposed for...absolutely nothing. It defies logic why they would do this, beyond some grand social experiment they can execute with little risk due to cult-like monopoly control of the market. I refuse to believe that they sold more than 12 of these SIM-less phones.
- wkat4242 3y agoFor who wonders about the waving cat: These are used a lot at hacker conferences to check if the cams are still working (and not frozen). Shenanigans on the network are of course common at these events :) So they are put on the stages while nothing is on. This was a big success and it turned out to be a bit of a mascotte :P They've become a permanent fixture now.
- noman-land 3y agoI always wondered about this. Thank you.
- SeriousM 3y agoI thought it's a smart way to combat video cutting
- wkat4242 3y agoCould be also but this is what I was told by the instructor when I volunteered for stream directing at a hacker conference
- sidpatil 3y agoFor those who are unfamiliar: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneki-neko https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneki-neko
- Veliladon 3y agoWe really dodged a bullet on eSIM. The implementation could have really sucked if the carriers controlled it from the start. Apple do a lot of dumb shit but they set a really high bar for an eSIM implementation for others to match.
- wkat4242 3y agoBut they do control it. This is a big problem in Europe. You can't get one on a prepay contract with most of the local carriers, they limit the phones they will allow them to be used on to only locally sold versions, and they often charge for a SIM swap or limit the amount of times you can change phones per month. None of these limitations were present with physical SIMs.
- Nextgrid 3y ago> You can't get one on a prepay contract with most of the local carriers, To be fair, on this particular point it can be incompetence. Telecoms have absolutely no skilled engineering capacity (third-world body shop is as good as it gets) and the entire thing runs on decades of duct tape and outdated, unsupported and vulnerable software. The most likely reason for this not to be possible on prepay is that prepay and postpay are managed by completely different systems and making the prepay system work with eSIMs would be too difficult, or maybe they tried, it broke, they rolled it back and have a "TODO" to fix that (of course the TODO will never be addressed).
- wkat4242 3y agoPossible yes but why would it be the same for every carrier then?
- mannyv 3y agoEveryone uses the same backend(s). For GSM carriers, esims add a layer of complexity because they are apparently bound to a phone. As you probably know, SIM cards can generally be swapped in. This makes provisioning more complicated, because roaming. I never bothered to understand how GSM addressing and routing works, but I'm assuming this requirement makes things even harder to deal with.
- notpushkin 3y agoAny idea how one can get hands on consumer-profile eUICC cards (or chips)? I've wanted to play around with eSIM (and perhaps use it for travel purposes), but don't want to upgrade my phone just yet. Found this one, but it's for testing only: https://www.smartjac.biz/esim-subscription-management/consumer-device-test-euicc-for-rsp-testing-remote-sim-provisioning https://www.smartjac.biz/esim-subscription-management/consum...
- flotzam 3y agohttps://esim.me https://esim.me is selling an eUICC-on-a-physical-SIM card. The only part that sucks is that you have to provision eSIM profiles through their proprietary Android app. Someone please reverse engineer it?
- notpushkin 3y agoAfter some research I've found this thread on XDA: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/a-tricky-way-to-use-esim-on-cn-in-variant.4609543/ https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/a-tricky-way-to-use-esim-... Seems like it should be possible to solder an eUICC chip to a SIM-card form factor board and use it with OpenEUICC. [1] Somebody is even selling those pre-soldered on Taobao: https://shop104192953.world.taobao.com/ https://shop104192953.world.taobao.com/ Later in that thread, somebody also reported that OpenEUICC works with eSIM.me's cards, too. If you have one of these, can you give it a try perhaps? [1]: https://gitea.angry.im/PeterCxy/OpenEUICC https://gitea.angry.im/PeterCxy/OpenEUICC, https://github.com/AndroPlus-org/magisk-module-openeuicc https://github.com/AndroPlus-org/magisk-module-openeuicc
- flotzam 3y agoNice, thanks for the links! (I don't own one, sorry)
- costco 3y agoAnyone know what the cost of starting a thin e-sim only "MVNO" would be? I've seen offerings like https://gigs.com https://gigs.com but I assume due to NDAs there's no public pricing. Wondering what it would take to to offer something along the lines of Airalo or like the "me.ONE" plan offered on esim.me.
- eimrine 3y agoEsim is a death for featured phones.
- 8K832d7tNmiQ 3y agoNothing stops feature-phone vendors like Nokia to implement e-sim on their newer lineup.
- eimrine 3y agoNewer lineup is not even close to a good phone because of: 1. Materials - newer phones are not even close in durability to 3310. 2. Logic of menu - old Nokias can be used without looking at display, new phones can update some UI statements after purchasing. 3. Display - colour displays are always less durable and almost always phones with such display has issues with too little font on some critical places. Compare any UI framework of any modern feature phone with a conception of three-line display where a letter/digit is never less than 1/3 of display height. Some versions of Nokias have increased font in typing a phone number case, I mean the numbers become 1/2 of display height which is handy for a low-sight person. Modern UI progress is a batshit compared to Nokia 1280.
- kalleboo 3y agoDo "feature phones" even use feature phone (=embedded, RT) OSes anymore? I assumed they all used KaiOS or Android under their easy-to-use UIs.
- eimrine 3y agoAndroid is not easy to use by any stretch of imagination.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoFor those with multiple phones, how easy is switching back and forth?
- mrtksn 3y agoUnfortunately, the support for transferring eSIM between devices is not universal and some operators choose not to support it and charge money for each transfer(i.e. charge money to generate a QR code). The tech is fine but the greedy telcos don't miss the opportunity to screw us over.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoWell crap. I guess for the foreseeable future it’s an iPhone 13.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoReally makes me appreciate how good we have it here phone-wise in ireland. You can't be charged for number porting, and the carrier gets a fine if they can't do it in 24 hours. (usually instantaneous) No idea if it's the same with eSIM. Plus, you can usually keep using the sim from your old carrier and the same number when you switch providers. (sometimes sims need replacing when network upgrades happen)
- richarme 3y agoMy master's thesis from 2008 [0] gives some insight into the early design and strategic considerations (from a Nokia perspective) behind eSIM technology, in case anyone's curious. [0] http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/pubdb/edoc/imm6812.pdf http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/pubdb/edoc/imm6812.pdf
- markdown 3y agoFun fact: Singapore doesn't support eSIM at all. Very strange, given that that country is relatively progressive when it comes to tech.
- Titan2189 3y agoAnything from Harald Welte (LaF0rge) is awesome. He's the world's best GSM / Phone hacker / explainer
- _8j50 3y agoWhy did they change ccc to be at the same time as defcon instead of end of year?
- 3np 3y agoThey didn't. This is from Chaos Communication Camp, which takes place every fourth summer. It's the annual Conference that happens in December. The dates for this Camp was announced prior to Defcon dates. If the conflict is actually intentional after all, I'd also be curious around the history of that.
- _8j50 3y agoGood to know but FYI, defcon/blackhat US are the same dates every year i can remeber
- 3np 3y agoDefcon dates are slightly different each year and this is the first time they collide. CCC dates were set pre-covid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEF_CON#Venues,_dates,_and_attendance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEF_CON#Venues,_dates,_and_att... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Communication_Camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Communication_Camp