
GSMA puts eSIM work 'on hold' due to US collusion investigation - casca
https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/21/gsma-puts-esim-on-hold-due-to-us-investigation/
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kalleboo
Seeing how impossible it is to get the Apple Watch on non-"partner" networks,
I'm very wary about all the supposed market reforms that are expected of eSIM.
I'm expecting the exact opposite will happen, with more "carrier exclusives"
and stuff like that to try to squeeze money out of customers. Just look at how
things worked out with ESNs on CDMA carriers in the US.

Physical SIM cards have worked fantastically well and were one of the greatest
ideas of GSM.

~~~
markonen
Apple Watch being tied to specific carriers has more to do with the feature
set required by Apple (primarily, sharing the same MSISDN between the iPhone
and the Watch) than anything directly related to the eSIM.

I would imagine that they (Apple) simply had no appetite for dealing with the
user experience corner cases of your Watch having a completely separate
identity.

There is precedent for this being relaxed over time and in future revisions of
the Watch. For example, Visual Voicemail used to be a requirement for iPhone
carriers. Today, no such requirements exist.

~~~
kalleboo
The fact is that as a owner of the hardware, Apple is not giving me any access
to swap out the eSIM to whatever I want. They control access to the eSIM.

If they had implemented the watch with a physical SIM (using, say, pair SIMs
which have existed since the 90's), I could crack it open and put in whatever
SIM card I wanted.

I envision an eSIM iPhone having a beautiful carrier selection portal with
gorgeous, high-resolution carrier logos... and only Apple partner carriers,
with specific iPhone-tailored plans. Goodbye my discount MVNO.

~~~
lwf
What's a "pair SIM"? It appears ungooglable.

~~~
madeofpalk
Is this what kalleboo is referring to
[https://kyivstar.ua/en/mm/services/voice/sim_pair](https://kyivstar.ua/en/mm/services/voice/sim_pair)
?

> _Incoming calls, messages etc. can be taken only by one of the mobile
> terminals, in which SIM-card is in so-called “active” state. Accordingly,
> SIM-card in another mobile terminal is passive and any outgoing operations
> can be made from this device.

> To transfer basic SIM-card into active state it is necessary to dial _107
> _1#. combination on mobile device keyboard. In this case extra SIM-card
> automatically transfers into passive mode. To transfer extra SIM-card into
> active state it is necessary to dial_ 107 _2#. combination on mobile device
> keyboard. In this case basic SIM-card automatically transfers into passive
> mode._

Yeah, I can understand why Apple didn't go down this path.

~~~
derda
Seems to be a restriction of that particular carrier. I used multi / pair sims
regularly years ago on several German networks (I.e. for car phones) and they
would all ring on incoming calls. However only one card would receive SMS
messages. But that should not have been a problem since iOS can already share
them between devices.

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Aaargh20318
I don't understand why carriers feel the need to SIM-lock a phone that's on a
contract anyway. I get it for pre-paid phones, the phone is partially
subsidised by the carrier and they want to make their money back, but even
there they have to unlock the phone after a year.

In the case of a phone on a contract, you're already locked into a contract.
Why lock the phone if the customer is already required to pay either way. In
fact, isn't it better for the operator if the customer uses their phone on
another network, that way they get the monthly payments without even having to
provide a service in return.

~~~
ryao
Their argument is that it helps to combat fradulent purchases where criminals
steal identities, buy phones on margin with the stolen identity and then ship
them for sale overseas. As it stands, they are stuck holding the bill.

The carriers should be forced to absorb the consequences of not requiring
payment upfront rather than forcing the rest of us to suffer from this absurd
locking strategy. The entire situation was manufactured by them. If they
required payment upfront, then this would be the credit card companies’
problem. They are much better equipped to deal with such things than carriers
anyway.

~~~
scherezade
When I switched carrier I had to go to a T-mobile store to show my passport
and do a debitcard transaction of 50 cents to verify that I had a working
bankaccount. Seems pretty fraud proof and it took ten minutes.

------
globile
A person with knowledge and ties to one of the small operators within the GSMA
eSIM group mentioned there are many problems with interpretation and
acceptance of certain proposed guidelines, especially by the big members.

One big issue on the table is carrier selection freedom once you have chosen
your initial operator. Big Telcos want to have the last word when it comes to
letting you go if you decide to, and were trying to bake certain clauses into
the agreement that would enable them to "oblige" the end user to pay a penalty
for premature contract breaking.

Basically, they want to replicate the existing regular sim-lock model with the
eSIM, but nothing else regarding free number portability would change.

Regardless of the eSIM, over the past 10 years carriers have been forced by
their governments to unlock phones for free in many countries but have always
ended up finding loopholes to make this really hard.

Only in Spain which has a population around 45M, we've gone from over 500,000
to just below 1M number portability changes per month so with so much at
stake, I really doubt the eSIM is going to make things any better for the end
customer.

Edit: formatting.

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rkangel
The irony here is that the whole point of SIM cards originally was that it
made the device independent of the network and that you could move from
network to network at will. I see the value from an electronics packaging
point of view, but I don't see how removing a SIM card makes it easier to move
network.

~~~
pwg
> I don't see how removing a SIM card makes it easier to move network.

The idea with eSIM is that instead of having to wait 5 days for the new
physical SIM to arrive in the mail (or instead of having to drive to a retail
shop to buy one), you can simply buy online and have the eSIM instantly
delivered to your phone, right in the moment.

The effect is that it would, if implemented as intended, further lower the
barrier to switching carriers (no delay for mail or no drive to retail store).

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MikeGale
If they call lock-in and making it very hard to leave "Loyalty", then these
businesses are truly delusional.

If people can leave easily they'll be forced to earn genuine loyalty, not this
fake kind.

~~~
StudentStuff
Niether AT&T or Verizon care about loyalty. The higher the cost to switch, the
better as far as their concerned. Similarly, Sprint has survived a decade on a
slowly shrinking business customer base, with losses mainly forestalled by the
roadblocks they like to throw out when porting hundreds of phone numbers and
device incompatability with other networks.

If the switching cost is too high, people won't switch!

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jacknews
Hold on, so there's possible collusion to stop the standard happening?

And now a govt investigation of that possible collusion is ... stopping the
standard happening?

~~~
StudentStuff
More like collusion to fundamentally break the standard before it is allowed
to flourish. What if you had a power plug that worked with outlets anywhere,
except if you plugged it in in certain businesses, whereby they only were
usable at said business, and were a brick otherwise. This is what AT&T has
been doing with Apple's eSIMs.

~~~
bogomipz
>"This is what AT&T has been doing with Apple's eSIMs."

So you can never take that Apple watch with the eSIM to a non AT&T network?
There is no unlock?

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k_lander
But why put it on hold? Wouldn't it make more sense to fast-track instead
after these signs of carrier collusion are coming to the surface?

~~~
shaki-dora
It’s the same dynamic that makes the drug business at the corner momentarily
pause while the police cruiser circles the block.

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ender89
Wait, the government is looking for collusion aimed at stopping eSIM
technology, so one of the alleged colluders is actually stopping the
development? In what world does that make sense?

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ungzd
Modern websites/services that use phone number as user identifier (or for 2FA)
as opposed to email address (i.e. Whatsapp) stop users from switching carriers
way more than need to get physical SIM card.

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sctb
Previous thread about the investigation:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16888016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16888016).

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huslage
As an FYI, Google Fi has been using the eSIM on Pixel 2 phones and it's great.
You can still opt for a physical SIM if you want, but I can't see a reason to.

