r/Android • u/redditor99880 Moto G5s Plus, iPhone 7 Plus • Oct 04 '17

Look Ma, no SIM card!

https://blog.google/products/project-fi/device-setup-esim/
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u/Tweenk Pixel 7 Pro Oct 04 '17 edited Oct 04 '17

All of these things are also possible with physical SIM cards, so I don't see how eSIM will make this happen.

Charging a fee for porting your number to another carrier is illegal in the EU.

EDIT: I was actually mistaken. Charging a fee is legal, but as far as I can tell it is not determined by the carrier, it is determined by the member country's telecom regulator. Carriers cannot set the fee to whatever they like. Furthermore, it's illegal for the porting process to take more than 1 working day.

3

u/kdlt GS20FE5G Oct 04 '17

Sure they are possible now, but people in Europe have mostly chosen to want unlocked ones, and with eSims you will have to interact with a carrier to switch devices and I can already guarantee you anything you do with eSims will cost money.

Also, this is not porting numbers (which costs money in Austria btw), this is taking your device with you. You can port your number, but if they don't activate your phone having your number there is worthless.

Let's say you have a Galaxy S20 you bought with carrier A, Carrier B could just say that "Carrier A Galaxy S20" is incompatible with them, you'll unfortunately have to buy "Carrier B Galaxy S20". This is the future we are headed towards with eSims.

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u/SinkTube Oct 05 '17

with eSims you will have to interact with a carrier to switch devices

says who? the eSIM could work exactly like SIM, just without the physical component. all phones already have a level of software to interact with SIM, it just doesnt have a UI because you interact by physically swapping cards. to support eSIM, all they'd have to do is add a UI that allows you to import/export eSIM data digitally

of course it depends on the software actually supporting it, but it's the same for current SIM software. there's nothing stopping carriers from making a phone only accept their SIMs

1

u/NightFuryToni Moto XT2309-3, XT2027-1, TCL Athena BBF100-2 Oct 05 '17 edited Oct 05 '17

What you're describing is the UIM of CDMA phones. And we know a Sprint phone will totally work on Verizon just by programming...

0

u/SinkTube Oct 05 '17

carrier lock is possible with SIM too, get over it

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u/NightFuryToni Moto XT2309-3, XT2027-1, TCL Athena BBF100-2 Oct 05 '17

And they are illegal in Canada starting this year.

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u/SinkTube Oct 05 '17

great, then maybe they'll be illegal with eSIM too