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I just don't see what problem eSIM solves aside from the "must be thinner/more seamless" non-problem. I suppose there might be some corner-cases-- super-travel
by hakfoo 3y ago
I just don't see what problem eSIM solves aside from the "must be thinner/more seamless" non-problem.
I suppose there might be some corner-cases-- super-travelers, spammers, certain types of devs and network engineers, where being able to have a thick stack of emulated SIM cards and toggling between them would be valuable, but I'm pretty sure they sold devices to do that with physical cards back in the day.
What I do see is a bunch of interesting new failure modes, and the ability for the carrier to get in between me and changing devices. They're going to want to turn "Put in the little pin and pop out the card" into something that involves paying $30 for the generation of a QR code.
- smoovb 3y agoAll depends on what problem you value. If you do any kind of international travel the value is clear. If you care about waste and manufacture of an unnecessary product the value is clear.
- hakfoo 3y agoI always figured physical SIMs were still preferrable for travel. You can largely handle them unattended-- buy it from a kiosk or even a vending machine, and swap it without worry about having to bootstrap connectivity to a provisioning website or whether the carrier and device are willing to do the eSIM dance. On the other hand, I'm actually surprised we don't see more carriers using better international roaming as a teaser to get people to buy more expensive plans too. The last time I went abroad (to the UK), my US T-mobile plan just worked for slow data, sufficient to Skype home (they said voice calls would be 25 cents per minute).