The eSIM Technology can change the Future Beyond Expectations - Find out how

Today’s smartphone industry’s quest for making phones or devices ‘slimmer’ or ‘smaller’ looks endless which in turn paving the path for impressive emerging technologies one by one.

Conventional sim card

Introduction of e-SIM/Embedded SIM is added to the likes of an under-screen fingerprint scanner, popup cameras, rear screen, etc. Now here’s a question?

Is it going to be a game-changer in the telecom and smartphone industries? Are there any advantages other than minimizing the device’s size? Any use cases in other industries too?

Well, here we’re going to answer all of them. Mainly, the working of the nascent technology- eSIM. I would say, the next version of the existing Subscriber identification module aka SIM card.

 eSIM, the remote sim provisioning technology was first introduced at the GSMA world mobile congress in 2016. The relation of SIM technology with the telecom industry is now going to change with the invention of eSIM.  To understand the changes that it is going to bring, we must understand the working of eSIM.

As we know, the existing SIMs have dedicated hardware space available in mobile phones, tablets and are removable. In case of dual SIM phones, two separate SIM slots will be there in the device. Until now, If the user wants to have another phone number or wants to switch to another network one has to remove the SIM card and has to insert the new one and wait till the activation of the same. Gone are the days of such hassles with the new eSIM Technology.

Also, the different sizes of SIM cards like Full Size, Mini, Micro, Nano sizes will be adding to the inconvenience of using different mobile networks. As said earlier, while the smartphone industry is running towards minimizing the device in size, the SIM which is the core purpose of having a phone also needs to be changed accordingly.

Here comes the concept of eSIM – Embedded Subscriber Identity module. As the name speaks, it will be embedded or soldered into the devices. It is also called eUICC (embedded Universal Integrated Circuit Card). 

The UICC on general SIM cards is made to store only one profile consisting of subscription details, operator’s credentials, and other SIM-based applications. For example, a SIM from Airtel will have data about Airtel operator and can use only on Airtel network. Unlike the SIM, the eUICC or eSIM paves the way to the idea of accommodating multiple profiles i.e. we can subscribe to more than two mobile networks at the same time.

But, how an eSIM can hold multiple profiles? It goes like this…

Usually, traditional UICC will be of 64KB or 128KB of memory and a particular profile is stored in it.

eSIM comes with 512KB memory and empty UICC i.e., no profile is stored in it. This UICC card will be embedded into the device and whenever a user subscribes

to a network, the profile will be downloaded  Over-the-air(OTA).UICC will be programmed such that the user can switch between mobile networks whenever needed, without physical replacement.

In India, Reliance Jio and Airtel have eSIM support as of now. Devices that have eSIM facility are iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, Google Pixel 3, Google Pixel 3 XL, Apple Watch Series 4 and Apple Watch series 3. And we can expect more devices and networks adopt this technology in coming years.

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The eSIM solution is benefitting the end users directly by allowing them to actively choose the network operator as per the connectivity, indirectly the enterprises that use devices targeting the consumer market. It is also giving a solution to the business to business customers in the Internet of things (IoT) market like smart devices that are capable of calling without the internet as well. Discussing how is it useful in the IoT market in detail is beyond the scope of this article though.

“Apart from the above, eSIM facilitates the smartphone manufacturers to completely conceal the phone so that space inside the device can be reduced to make small and thin phones. Devices that are more tolerant to environmental factors like dampness, temperature, vibration etc can be manufactured as the device can be sealed.”

Meizu’s hole-less phone is one such example.

Operators now can emerge their business into new markets like wearables, consumer electronics, etc. As SIM card distribution costs are eliminated eSIMs will enable new distribution models for devices and for the marketing of subscriptions.

As a tradition, we also discuss the downsides of eSIM. The introduction of eSIMs can also introduce some other hassles like talking to customer care if there are any issues and not being able to use others’ sim cards in a phone with eSIM capability.

But, as we’re emerging, we will be over them and we have to accept the future and let go the little conveniences we had from the past such as the poor headphone jack.

So, we’re here!

Safe to say that eSIM specification can be a major player in all possible above-mentioned markets and going to be a game changer in the smartphone manufacturing industry in the future.

That’s about eSIM and hope that we did our best to make it easy to understand and straight to the point. You can reach out to us in the comments section.

 Good day! J

[Note: This is a revived article from January 2019. The devices supporting esim are more now]