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I can. I bought a bunch of cellular iPads off Amazon (“renewed”, aka refurbished) for my business. I tried out a few IoT cellular providers and the first one u

I can. I bought a bunch of cellular iPads off Amazon (“renewed”, aka refurbished) for my business. I tried out a few IoT cellular providers and the first one used regular SIM cards and they worked just fine. The second carrier (that I ultimately went with) used eSIM and while most my iPads joined up without issue I had 7 of them refuse to add the eSIM. While carriers aren’t allowed to lock iPads SIM they _are_ allowed to lock them to only work with their eSIM. AT&T was the culprit here and you can find multiple mentions of this practice on their forums which appeared to be the only way to get help on this issue. Post a new topic, wait for customer support to come along and PM you, then ask for your iPads to be unlocked (EUICC). AT&T Forum support ultimately told me “those iPads aren’t in our system, there is no lock on them”. I tried calling in (BTW, they won’t even talk to you unless you are a customer of theirs which, thankfully?, I was for my personal line) and spent hours on the phone with them only to be told the same thing. I want to be clear, I spent over 4 hours across multiple calls where I was told different things but ultimately told “there is nothing we can do”. At this point I called Apple (Apple Business Manager) where I was able to talk to a real person within <1 min of dialing (normally I spent 10min in AT&T phone tree hell) and they confirmed “this is an EUICC/eSIM lock on the device by AT&T. ONLY AT&T can remove the lock”. I cannot rave enough about how easy it was to talk to ABM and how knowledgeable the person was, not to mention how they were easy to understand and immediately understood what I was asking. It was a stark difference from AT&T. I called back into AT&T and just kept pushing until someone said they would do it and it’d be fixed in 24 hours. It was not. I had a couple more rounds with AT&T, each with 24-72 hours promises that it would be fixed. This dragged on for _weeks_. Finally, as a hail mary before I attempted to return the troublesome iPads to Amazon (which was what AT&T support kept suggesting I do), I filed an FCC complaint and in less than 3 days AT&T reached out to me (no more automated systems) and released the lock on all my iPads. The same lock they swore didn’t exist, for iPads they swore were not “in their system”. So yeah, there’s a case of anti-lock in being subverted with eSIM and the hell I had to go through to get it fixed.

CrendKing 3y ago
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?
- joshstrange 3y ago
  I was able to use non-AT&T physical SIM cards without issue, I was blocked from using non-AT&T eSIMs. That’s all I know and I’m not sure on the laws around it.
turquoisevar 3y ago
Ah good old AT&T with the sleazy shit Technically it’s not a SIM lock (also called carrier lock) in the traditional sense, AT&T calls it the carrier visibility or carrier reveal program. It’s a BS name because it doesn’t just hide other carriers from the carrier select screen, it also actively prevents eSIM activation via QR code etc. And if you need help from AT&T CS 9/10 have never heard of this term. For all intents and purposes it’s basically just an eSIM specific SIM lock. But you (and anyone reading this that runs into the same issue) can use the “carrier visibility/reveal” terminology to get the issue resolved faster in the future.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  > Technically it’s not a SIM lock (also called carrier lock) in the traditional sense, AT&T calls it the carrier visibility or carrier reveal program. Yes, I forgot to mention that but I did know it at the time (I still have a doc with all those terms in it that I used when talking to the reps) and yes, almost no one knows what you are talking about. Even when I got someone to “put in a request” (which didn’t work) they sounded skeptical about what they were putting in a request for. It didn’t feel like they knew what I was talking about. The only people that did use that term or understand it (other than the rep that contacted me after the FCC complaint) were the forum support but they told me the iPads weren’t in their system.
denkmoon 3y ago
Sounds like the system worked as intended, you reached out to the telco regulator and the issue was resolved in 3 days. Also sounds like it isn't specifically an esim problem, but an AT&T being a shit company that tries to get away with illegal things problem and in this instance that involved an esim. I'm more asking about cases where using an esim means the existing regulations don't apply, not instances of some shit company disobeying regulation until the regulator gets involved.

CrendKing 3y ago

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?

joshstrange 3y ago
I was able to use non-AT&T physical SIM cards without issue, I was blocked from using non-AT&T eSIMs. That’s all I know and I’m not sure on the laws around it.

turquoisevar 3y ago

Ah good old AT&T with the sleazy shit Technically it’s not a SIM lock (also called carrier lock) in the traditional sense, AT&T calls it the carrier visibility or carrier reveal program. It’s a BS name because it doesn’t just hide other carriers from the carrier select screen, it also actively prevents eSIM activation via QR code etc. And if you need help from AT&T CS 9/10 have never heard of this term. For all intents and purposes it’s basically just an eSIM specific SIM lock. But you (and anyone reading this that runs into the same issue) can use the “carrier visibility/reveal” terminology to get the issue resolved faster in the future.

joshstrange 3y ago
> Technically it’s not a SIM lock (also called carrier lock) in the traditional sense, AT&T calls it the carrier visibility or carrier reveal program. Yes, I forgot to mention that but I did know it at the time (I still have a doc with all those terms in it that I used when talking to the reps) and yes, almost no one knows what you are talking about. Even when I got someone to “put in a request” (which didn’t work) they sounded skeptical about what they were putting in a request for. It didn’t feel like they knew what I was talking about. The only people that did use that term or understand it (other than the rep that contacted me after the FCC complaint) were the forum support but they told me the iPads weren’t in their system.

denkmoon 3y ago

Sounds like the system worked as intended, you reached out to the telco regulator and the issue was resolved in 3 days. Also sounds like it isn't specifically an esim problem, but an AT&T being a shit company that tries to get away with illegal things problem and in this instance that involved an esim. I'm more asking about cases where using an esim means the existing regulations don't apply, not instances of some shit company disobeying regulation until the regulator gets involved.