iPhone 14 Thankfully Accelerates The Shift To eSIM
from the about-damn-time dept
One of the more notable announcements at Apple’s event this week was that the iPhone 14 lineup won’t have a physical SIM tray to swap out SIM cards. Instead, the devices will embrace eSIM, a technology that’s supposed to make it easier than ever to switch carriers without consumers needing to buy and install a new SIM card.
With eSIM, user identification technology embedded in a traditional SIM card is instead transferred to the device’s processor or modem itself. Ideally, that could let a consumer switch carriers within just a few seconds. iOS 16 also lets you transfer your eSIM between iPhones via Bluetooth.
As we’ve covered in the past, AT&T and Verizon didn’t much like technology that made switching carriers easier, since, for the last few years, they’d been losing subscribers hand over fist to T-Mobile, and (correctly) worried that eSIM would accelerate that trend (T-Mobile lets users use eSIM to test drive the T-Mobile network for a few months).
So AT&T and Verizon leveraged their influence over the GSM Association (GSMA) — a trade association for mobile network operators — to hamstring the technology’s rise. This was done by ensuring the inclusion of bizarre and arbitrary restrictions and bureaucracies a DOJ investigation found served no technical purpose outside of slowing the actual implementation of the tech and locking users to one carrier (as is often the case, AT&T and Verizon faced zero penalty for the behavior).
Which is a long way of saying that Apple fully embracing eSIM will be a good thing. With some growing pains and shorter term caveats. For example, there are some concerns among international carriers that a lack of eSIM options will lock them into paying obnoxiously expensive roaming costs through US carriers:
Still, that problem should be mitigated as eSIM becomes the global standard, which will happen a hell of a lot more quickly now that the most popular phone maker on the planet has fully embraced the tech.
Filed Under: 5g, competition, esim, iphone, mobile carriers, telecom
Companies: apple
Comments on “iPhone 14 Thankfully Accelerates The Shift To eSIM”
This phrasing is a bit unclear, as the announcements were. To clarify: the American iPhone 14 won’t support SIM cards in any way. It lacks the tray, the contacts, and any other method (such as a USB dongle) to read a SIM card. So, this goes quite beyond “embracing eSIM”.
Presumably, omitting this will not benefit this phone’s design in any way, because the same phone will have a nano-SIM reader in every other country—while still supporting eSIM everywhere but China (where there will be 2 nano-SIM readers). At this point, it seems like a purely political move to make international carriers support eSIM or lose the American tourist market. Once support is widespread, they’ll drop support elsewhere and maybe they’ll be able to make the phone a bit thinner or something.
For now, since only Americans will have phones with no SIM card support, it’ll be easier to charge them higher prices for eSIMs. If this, or a lack of international eSIM availability is a concern, Americans could go to Canada or Mexico to buy (or order online from any non-US retailer).
I wonder how long it will be before there is malware targeting eSim: opening up bluetooth for a targetted signal, upon reciept of which the malware dumps the eSim contents to bluetooth for anyone to pick up.
iOS 16 also lets you transfer your eSIM between iPhones via Bluetooth.
Unless the original phone dies, and what then? At least with a physical SIM card I can just take it out and put it in the new device should the old one up and die on me, lack of Bluetoothing from the dead device notwithstanding.
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Then you contact your carrier and they will download a eSIM to your new phone
Re: Re:
On what device? My phone is all I have. Q-/
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Very little of your contents on iPhone is actually stored on the SIM. You loose very little. Unlike android nothing personal beyond the ID is on your sim.
All the relevant info is part of, or duplicated in, your iCloud account. So as long as you are doing proper, free, backups, you won’t loose anything of concern.
Get new iPhone, with new eSIM number, log into iCloud, restore backup.
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Get new iPhone, with new eSIM number, log into iCloud, restore backup, do not transfer SIM, destroying the point of them being transferrable. Nope, didn’t think you’d get it, stupid troll.
Re: Re: Re: Ignorance
There’s nothing on the iPhone sim of value.
The IIN, IAI, are not relevant to the new phone. The IMSI is included in your iCloud account. That’s because you use the same account info for iCloud on Mac if you have a phone or iPad.
And unlike android no personal data is stored on the sim. No contacts. No messages. No non-service-level geo data.
Benefits?
Why is this a good thing? I like/depend on the ability to pop out the SIM from one phone and switch to another phone. So, now do I have to contact the phone company and have them switch my esim from one phone to another on a regular basis?
Or, perhaps I could have a phone with a switchable battery?
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Yeah, I am very concerned for the anti-consumer potentials for this. My own phone manufacturer, a smaller one in the UK, dropped esim from their latest model since most people want two physical nano slots, one for their main sim, one for burner sims on a different network.
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There is a phone manufacturer in the U.K?
Details please. I live in England and would like to have a snedge at and maybe buy such a telephone.
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I totally agree. If I have a phone with problems, I just switch the Sim and I’m back on the air in minutes.
And I don’t have to pay charge to do so
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I’m not convinced it’s a good thing either. I travel a lot and love the fact that I can buy temporary SIM cards so things like my tablet can connect to the Internet without using weak, puny hotel Wi-Fi’s. eSIMs sound like a pfaff.
Then there’s the anonymity; in some parts of the world you can buy a SIM in a supermarket for cash, top it up with cash, and hey-presto you’re online with no-one knowing your identity. Useful for those who need it.
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Bedankt voor het delen van dit informatieve artikel.
eSim and regulations
We were working on eSim regulations in Russia, and it has two problems that hinder it’s adoption in a lot on not-so-democratic countries. First of all, it makes current law enforcement access schemes way harder (which they don’t like). Second, eSim infrastructure requires a lot of security solutions that provided by the likes of Thales – which can be deemed a security risk. Until then, getting eSim is basically the same as getting physical sim – you will have to come to the office.
T-Mobile
T-Mobile also tends to not charge for a SIM card. If not by default, just ask them to waive the $5 fee.