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Notable that apple did their "esim is the only option" in the USA, but in other countries they were forced to include a SIM slot because they couldn't force mob

Notable that apple did their "esim is the only option" in the USA, but in other countries they were forced to include a SIM slot because they couldn't force mobile networks to support esims. And esims are just a software/provisioning change for most mobile networks. Yet apple couldn't force it to happen. Even now, 5 years on, esims aren't supported on most mobile networks outside the USA and many models of phone don't support them.

shiroiushi 2y ago
Apple has a commanding marketshare in the US and some other rich countries, but in places like India, it's a rather small player. So Apple might be able to force some things in some countries like the US, but it's not going to fly in many other places. The esim thing is a little curious though, because it seems like that should be pretty easy for carriers to support, unlike for instance only supporting 5G. Maybe there's something I don't understand about esim implementation at the carrier level. As an aside, though, esim is really a godsend when traveling. Instead of having to get a local SIM card somewhere and get that set up, there's a bunch of easy-to-use services where you just install an app on your phone and buy a temporary-use esim while you're traveling in a particular country. You can buy the esim beforehand, and then switch to it when your plane lands.
- Nextgrid 2y ago
  eSIM is to a certain extent harder for carriers than 5G. You need to keep in mind that carriers have near-zero actual engineering capability. They're a marketing & financing operation with a very small technical skeleton crew, with most of the actual network management outsourced to their equipment vendor. 5G is relatively "simple" to support - you give a ton of money to your equipment vendor, they give you new equipment to install and it's done. The vendor happily does all the work for a fee and they can do it fine because it's not their first rodeo. eSIM on the other hand ties into the account & billing management software which is custom for each carrier (and it's a "big ball of mud" of crappy Java accumulated over 2 decades). The vendor can't help here - each carrier has their own ball of mud, so there is no economies of scale possible here. 5G is completely transparent to the "big ball of mud". The differing bits are all handled by the vendor-provided equipment, the ball of mud doesn't know/care. 5G doesn't change any fundamentals - the big ball of mud can treat it as a 2G network. You've still got phone numbers, CDRs, etc. eSIM is a fundamental change though. You go from physical SIMs that must be created & registered in advance, and then linked to an account by some privileged user (CS agent or in-store employee), to "SIMs" that can be created out of thin air and registered by the user themselves. This requires new functionality in the "big ball of mud". The security profile also changes - with physical SIMs the security is provided by the privileged user who is supposed to check the legitimacy of any SIM swap/registration request. With eSIMs this is done online by the user, so there needs to be additional security checks, fraud protection, etc that the existing system (which so far was pretty low stakes as no security-critical action could be done online) suddenly needs to be hardened to support. This would be no big deal for a dedicated engineering team at any decent tech company or even startup, but these companies are as far away from "tech/startup" as you can imagine, and no competent engineer would want to work there for the terrible pay/conditions/pervasive mediocrity that's in such companies. It's the same situation as with legacy banks still not being able to catch up to the functionality & user experience offered by modern "challenger banks" despite having orders of magnitude more resources and capital.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Very interesting. However, isn't the 5G deployment a little more involved on the carrier's end? I can understand if the technical part is outsourced to an equipment vendor, but what about the site selection, and all the legal and administrative hurdles needed to actually get permission to build a new cell tower somewhere, or install equipment on an existing tower or building? Or is that just really easy for the carriers at this point because they've done lots of it? I guess it doesn't really matter from the legal/admin perspective if it's 5G or 2G. How about MVNOs and eSIMs? Is this something where MVNOs might have an easier time since they're smaller/newer companies than the big incumbents? I've only done the travel eSIM thing once, but it seemed like they were using small MVNOs rather than any big carriers when I visited North America this way.
    - Nextgrid 2y ago
      > what about the site selection, and all the legal and administrative hurdles needed to actually get permission to build a new cell tower somewhere It depends if they're building new towers or just upgrading existing ones. Doing a like-for-like swap can presumably be done entirely by the vendor, setting up new sites indeed needs a bit of work, so maybe whatever little technical staff they have handles that (or maybe even that is outsourced too). > How about MVNOs and eSIMs? When it comes to MVNOs it depends whether the MVNO runs (at least parts of) their own infrastructure or is just white-labelling the upstream carrier's one. In the former case they can indeed do it, but the company culture challenges still apply. You need to hire and retain good engineers, something I'm not aware of any telecom company actually prioritizing. Meaning they too will eventually end up with a ball of mud in a few years. In the latter case they're just reselling the upstream turd with a bit of polish. If the upstream ball of mud can't manage eSIMs, they can't either. > I've only done the travel eSIM thing I wouldn't recommend relying on these. You're getting bottom-of-the-barrel capacity that (even if it works) is so slow that you'd be lucky to even use up half your data cap. You are always roaming and your data is tunnelled through what feels like some dial-up modem in some shady warehouse. These are a scam.
      - edualm 2y ago
mvanbaak 2y ago
I have experience with mobile operators in Brazil and western Europe, and all providers support esim there. So I'm not 100% sure where you get the 'fact' that outside the USA it's not supported on most networks. Besides some annoyances (try to switch phone while your plan is on esim. I hope you dont reset your old phone before you transferred the esim to your new phone), esim really works.
- oarsinsync 2y ago
  > Besides some annoyances (try to switch phone while your plan is on esim. I hope you dont reset your old phone before you transferred the esim to your new phone), esim really works. This makes it sounds like the way AppleCare works is incompatible with eSIMs, as I’m required to reset my old phone before they’re able to pull out the replacement handset and allow me to activate it.
  - Nextgrid 2y ago
    I believe you can reset while keeping eSIMs provisioned: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253176559?sortBy=rank https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253176559?sortBy=rank
- zarzavat 2y ago
  Let’s say I drop my phone and it breaks. I buy a new phone or I have a spare device (e.g. old phone). How do I move my SIM to my new phone? For physical SIM it’s really easy. I take the SIM card out and put it in my new device. It takes five minutes and four of those are spent looking for a paperclip. Since I have access to my number immediately, I can set up important things like Google account and banking apps immediately that require SMS 2FA to move to a new device. For eSIM, if the answer is contact customer support, then how? My old phone is dead and my new phone doesn’t have a SIM. I have to go out of my way to find a Wifi network (for billions of people their phone is their only internet connection), borrow someone else’s phone, or buy a temporary eSIM. Then what do I tell customer support? In most of the world SIM cards are not tied to any contract, you just buy it in cash. How do I prove that the eSIM in my old phone is mine if I can’t use the phone that the eSIM is in? If the answer is “when you bought the eSIM you get a code that you have to keep safe”, then nobody is going to do that over multiple years. So I suspect the answer is that I just have to buy a new SIM and say goodbye to my old phone number. This is incredibly inconvenient given that the software industry has decided that phone numbers are persistent 2FA passwords that never change. If I need to get into my Google account then I may need the SIM. Because of this I will end up paying to repair a phone that I have already replaced, just to extract the eSIM! eSIM seems like it was designed by someone from the US who has no idea how the rest of the world uses phones, particularly the developing world.

shiroiushi 2y ago

Apple has a commanding marketshare in the US and some other rich countries, but in places like India, it's a rather small player. So Apple might be able to force some things in some countries like the US, but it's not going to fly in many other places. The esim thing is a little curious though, because it seems like that should be pretty easy for carriers to support, unlike for instance only supporting 5G. Maybe there's something I don't understand about esim implementation at the carrier level. As an aside, though, esim is really a godsend when traveling. Instead of having to get a local SIM card somewhere and get that set up, there's a bunch of easy-to-use services where you just install an app on your phone and buy a temporary-use esim while you're traveling in a particular country. You can buy the esim beforehand, and then switch to it when your plane lands.

Nextgrid 2y ago
eSIM is to a certain extent harder for carriers than 5G. You need to keep in mind that carriers have near-zero actual engineering capability. They're a marketing & financing operation with a very small technical skeleton crew, with most of the actual network management outsourced to their equipment vendor. 5G is relatively "simple" to support - you give a ton of money to your equipment vendor, they give you new equipment to install and it's done. The vendor happily does all the work for a fee and they can do it fine because it's not their first rodeo. eSIM on the other hand ties into the account & billing management software which is custom for each carrier (and it's a "big ball of mud" of crappy Java accumulated over 2 decades). The vendor can't help here - each carrier has their own ball of mud, so there is no economies of scale possible here. 5G is completely transparent to the "big ball of mud". The differing bits are all handled by the vendor-provided equipment, the ball of mud doesn't know/care. 5G doesn't change any fundamentals - the big ball of mud can treat it as a 2G network. You've still got phone numbers, CDRs, etc. eSIM is a fundamental change though. You go from physical SIMs that must be created & registered in advance, and then linked to an account by some privileged user (CS agent or in-store employee), to "SIMs" that can be created out of thin air and registered by the user themselves. This requires new functionality in the "big ball of mud". The security profile also changes - with physical SIMs the security is provided by the privileged user who is supposed to check the legitimacy of any SIM swap/registration request. With eSIMs this is done online by the user, so there needs to be additional security checks, fraud protection, etc that the existing system (which so far was pretty low stakes as no security-critical action could be done online) suddenly needs to be hardened to support. This would be no big deal for a dedicated engineering team at any decent tech company or even startup, but these companies are as far away from "tech/startup" as you can imagine, and no competent engineer would want to work there for the terrible pay/conditions/pervasive mediocrity that's in such companies. It's the same situation as with legacy banks still not being able to catch up to the functionality & user experience offered by modern "challenger banks" despite having orders of magnitude more resources and capital.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  Very interesting. However, isn't the 5G deployment a little more involved on the carrier's end? I can understand if the technical part is outsourced to an equipment vendor, but what about the site selection, and all the legal and administrative hurdles needed to actually get permission to build a new cell tower somewhere, or install equipment on an existing tower or building? Or is that just really easy for the carriers at this point because they've done lots of it? I guess it doesn't really matter from the legal/admin perspective if it's 5G or 2G. How about MVNOs and eSIMs? Is this something where MVNOs might have an easier time since they're smaller/newer companies than the big incumbents? I've only done the travel eSIM thing once, but it seemed like they were using small MVNOs rather than any big carriers when I visited North America this way.
  - Nextgrid 2y ago
    > what about the site selection, and all the legal and administrative hurdles needed to actually get permission to build a new cell tower somewhere It depends if they're building new towers or just upgrading existing ones. Doing a like-for-like swap can presumably be done entirely by the vendor, setting up new sites indeed needs a bit of work, so maybe whatever little technical staff they have handles that (or maybe even that is outsourced too). > How about MVNOs and eSIMs? When it comes to MVNOs it depends whether the MVNO runs (at least parts of) their own infrastructure or is just white-labelling the upstream carrier's one. In the former case they can indeed do it, but the company culture challenges still apply. You need to hire and retain good engineers, something I'm not aware of any telecom company actually prioritizing. Meaning they too will eventually end up with a ball of mud in a few years. In the latter case they're just reselling the upstream turd with a bit of polish. If the upstream ball of mud can't manage eSIMs, they can't either. > I've only done the travel eSIM thing I wouldn't recommend relying on these. You're getting bottom-of-the-barrel capacity that (even if it works) is so slow that you'd be lucky to even use up half your data cap. You are always roaming and your data is tunnelled through what feels like some dial-up modem in some shady warehouse. These are a scam.
    - edualm 2y ago

mvanbaak 2y ago

I have experience with mobile operators in Brazil and western Europe, and all providers support esim there. So I'm not 100% sure where you get the 'fact' that outside the USA it's not supported on most networks. Besides some annoyances (try to switch phone while your plan is on esim. I hope you dont reset your old phone before you transferred the esim to your new phone), esim really works.

oarsinsync 2y ago
> Besides some annoyances (try to switch phone while your plan is on esim. I hope you dont reset your old phone before you transferred the esim to your new phone), esim really works. This makes it sounds like the way AppleCare works is incompatible with eSIMs, as I’m required to reset my old phone before they’re able to pull out the replacement handset and allow me to activate it.
- Nextgrid 2y ago
  I believe you can reset while keeping eSIMs provisioned: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253176559?sortBy=rank https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253176559?sortBy=rank
zarzavat 2y ago
Let’s say I drop my phone and it breaks. I buy a new phone or I have a spare device (e.g. old phone). How do I move my SIM to my new phone? For physical SIM it’s really easy. I take the SIM card out and put it in my new device. It takes five minutes and four of those are spent looking for a paperclip. Since I have access to my number immediately, I can set up important things like Google account and banking apps immediately that require SMS 2FA to move to a new device. For eSIM, if the answer is contact customer support, then how? My old phone is dead and my new phone doesn’t have a SIM. I have to go out of my way to find a Wifi network (for billions of people their phone is their only internet connection), borrow someone else’s phone, or buy a temporary eSIM. Then what do I tell customer support? In most of the world SIM cards are not tied to any contract, you just buy it in cash. How do I prove that the eSIM in my old phone is mine if I can’t use the phone that the eSIM is in? If the answer is “when you bought the eSIM you get a code that you have to keep safe”, then nobody is going to do that over multiple years. So I suspect the answer is that I just have to buy a new SIM and say goodbye to my old phone number. This is incredibly inconvenient given that the software industry has decided that phone numbers are persistent 2FA passwords that never change. If I need to get into my Google account then I may need the SIM. Because of this I will end up paying to repair a phone that I have already replaced, just to extract the eSIM! eSIM seems like it was designed by someone from the US who has no idea how the rest of the world uses phones, particularly the developing world.