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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 o

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.
- Nextgrid 2y ago
  A friend of mine went through this same scenario while abroad. In his case he actually did have the eSIM on a contract attached to his name, but the issue is that he couldn't get it reissued from abroad for security reasons and/or activating it from abroad wasn't possible (if he could get a Wi-Fi network VPN'd back to the UK it would've probably worked). It was a nightmare to sort out, and I believe he had to ultimately arrange a physical SIM getting delivered to a friend in his home country who then forwarded it to him. > eSIM seems like it was designed by someone from the US eSIM was designed by committee to allow carriers more control over switching and/or moving SIMs. Carriers see the ability to easily move a physical SIM outside of their control as a problem. eSIM is the solution, putting them back into the loop and ensuring they can do obnoxious things like charge fees on issuing a (one-time-use!) eSIM QR code (the fee made sense back then as it involved delivery of a physical SIM, but now it's just pure racket).
  - maxsilver 2y ago
    > Carriers see the ability to easily move a physical SIM outside of their control as a problem Every carrier has already had the ability to block moving physical SIMS too, for many decades now. (AT&T in the US literally did used to block physical SIM swaps, for ages) eSIMs don't actually give carriers any more-or-less control over SIM movement than they already had before.
    - Nextgrid 2y ago
      Maybe this was common in the US, but absolutely unheard of in Europe. eSIMs allow them to sneak in that control as part of the move to eSIMs and get consumers to accept it, even though technically they already had this control previously.
    - pests 2y ago
      On Verion I get a text if any device on my plan has its sim changed. They can easily block them if they wanted to.
- maxsilver 2y ago

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.

Nextgrid 2y ago
A friend of mine went through this same scenario while abroad. In his case he actually did have the eSIM on a contract attached to his name, but the issue is that he couldn't get it reissued from abroad for security reasons and/or activating it from abroad wasn't possible (if he could get a Wi-Fi network VPN'd back to the UK it would've probably worked). It was a nightmare to sort out, and I believe he had to ultimately arrange a physical SIM getting delivered to a friend in his home country who then forwarded it to him. > eSIM seems like it was designed by someone from the US eSIM was designed by committee to allow carriers more control over switching and/or moving SIMs. Carriers see the ability to easily move a physical SIM outside of their control as a problem. eSIM is the solution, putting them back into the loop and ensuring they can do obnoxious things like charge fees on issuing a (one-time-use!) eSIM QR code (the fee made sense back then as it involved delivery of a physical SIM, but now it's just pure racket).
- maxsilver 2y ago
  > Carriers see the ability to easily move a physical SIM outside of their control as a problem Every carrier has already had the ability to block moving physical SIMS too, for many decades now. (AT&T in the US literally did used to block physical SIM swaps, for ages) eSIMs don't actually give carriers any more-or-less control over SIM movement than they already had before.
  - Nextgrid 2y ago
    Maybe this was common in the US, but absolutely unheard of in Europe. eSIMs allow them to sneak in that control as part of the move to eSIMs and get consumers to accept it, even though technically they already had this control previously.
  - pests 2y ago
    On Verion I get a text if any device on my plan has its sim changed. They can easily block them if they wanted to.
maxsilver 2y ago