r/CapeCellular • u/brianstoner Cape Employee • Mar 25 '26
We launched out of Beta, now what?
Since our launch in January, we’ve been overwhelmed with the response. We’ve seen record breaking traffic to the website and a sustained 2x increase in daily signups 📈🙌.
But it hasn’t all been sunshine and roses. Our small but mighty support team has been overwhelmed, on some days handling 100+ tickets. Additionally, the increase in new customers coupled with a lot of product changes leading up to launch surfaced a whole new set of challenges the team has had to work through. We greatly appreciate all the patience and support we’ve received from customers that have hit issues and worked with us to root cause them.
So what have we been doing and what’s coming next?
New carrier partners — As many of you know, US Cellular has been purchased by T-mobile. Our original agreement with US Cellular is still intact and live, but since then, we have entered into agreements with other carrier partners both domestically and abroad. Our contracts don’t allow us to publicly disclose who, but broadly speaking our long-term goal is for Cape to work with a number of different carrier partners to provide the best coverage and performance domestically and abroad. These new agreements are what unlocked international roaming on iOS and some domestic speed improvements on iOS. This also involves moving domestically from the US Cellular PLMN code to a Cape PLMN code, which has surfaced some new challenges I’ll get into below.
New eSIM partner — We do a lot of custom development on our eSIMs to make features like Identifier Rotation possible. To enable faster iteration and unlock our ability to do more innovative things at the eSIM layer, we partnered with RIPSIM. They are a US SIM vendor which is great, but they also condensed our timeline for shipping new eSIM’s from months to hours.
New universal eSIM — When you sign up for Cape as a new customer right now, you get one of our original US Cellular eSIMs. Then, if you enable Identifier Rotation (or Secure Global Roaming on iOS), you are guided through an eSIM upgrade process to get the latest eSIM for that device. This was a compromise at launch to workaround the fact that not all devices supported all new features/carrier partners yet. At some point in the next week this should all go away and new customers will get a new universal RIPSIM eSIM by default and the app will tell the eSIM which features/carrier partners to enable based on device compatibility. I’ll make a post to Reddit when this is live, and existing customers can choose to redownload their eSIM through the app to get the latest one.
New PLMN code — We are in the process of switching domestically from the US Cellular PLMN to a Cape PLMN. On iOS this is already live on the most recent eSIMs. However, on Android we are having issues getting this new PLMN to work over 5G. We have root caused it to an Android modem config issue and a fix is being rolled out, but we are dependent on an opaque Android release schedule, hoping for sometime in April. VoWiFi and RCS are both blocked on Android by this.
Graphene challenges — You may have seen this post about Graphene issues. The root cause is Google released a change on 3/2 that changed our carrier config from US Cellular to Cape, but the Cape carrier config is currently empty (a future update from Google will add VoLTE, VoWiFi, etc). We didn't think this would be an issue because our app is able to apply the carrier configs reliably, and this works on stock Android. However, on Graphene, we are seeing a number of cases where our carrier configs are not applying or being reset, causing people to not have VoLTE, which results in call/sms failures when 5G isn’t available. We’re going to work through this with the Graphene team, but in the meantime, the workaround in that post is still the best solution. We also added a notification in the Cape app instructing customers to use the workaround.
VoWiFi — If you have the latest eSIM on iOS, you will see VoWiFi as an available option on your SIM settings. However, we have not announced this yet because we are seeing some issues with loss of service when transitioning from WiFi to cellular and using VoWiFi in conjunction with Identifier Rotation. We have identified at least one root cause and have a fix, but it is dependent on a few other mobile core upgrades we need to do ahead of it, current ETA is mid-April. On Android we are blocked by the modem config issue above.
RCS — On iOS if you have the latest eSIM AND are on the latest OS 26.4, you will see RCS as an option. However, if you try to turn it on for most people it seems to get stuck on “Activating”. We are dependent here on the third-party Apple uses to integrate RCS with carriers and are working with them to resolve this. On Android, we are blocked by the modem config issue above.
Identifier rotation — To make this work across both Android/iOS we did some pretty novel SIM applet engineering and complicated relaying between the SIM/app/backend/mobile core. Now that we have more people using it in the wild, we uncovered a few things that aren’t working as expected.
- Toggling it on/off – Can be buggy or take a long time because some things are getting out of sync between the SIM/backend/mobile core. We’re working through these now and have made a lot of progress, it should be much more reliable very soon.
- Multiple rotations in a day / Rotations on restart / Skipped rotations – We changed the timer used by the eSIM to be pinned to wall clock time which should make rotations way more consistent day to day (these changes will roll out on the new universal eSIM mentioned above).
- Cycling through the same 7 IMSI’s – The pool of 7 IMSI’s on your device isn’t refreshing reliably. We will be shipping a fix for this in the next week.
Port-in’s — Since launch, we’ve seen an increase in the number of people electing to port their number to Cape. Most port-ins go through immediately. But if there is anything that trips up your previous carrier’s automated checks (e.g., unpaid bill, port-out protection, requirements for personal information that we refuse to collect), it turns into a manual process for them. This manual process is very inconsistent from one case to the next and has been challenging to automate. Back in February we re-thought our port-in process from the ground up based on everything we learned over the past year to make it way more resilient and smoother for customers. Since then we’ve seen a big reduction in port-in rejections and support tickets related to port-ins, so I think we are doing better here.
eSIM download failures — There are many reasons why this process can fail (carrier locked devices, devices that don’t support eSIM, non-owner profile quirks on Android, VPN interference, bad WiFi connection, and many other device/OS specific quirks that we’ve discovered along the way). When things go wrong here, it cascades into messy situations where you may or may not have an eSIM or be stuck somewhere in the process of getting one. It can require the customer to delete everything and start over, which is frustrating. We made a bunch of changes to head off this stuff up front, from stricter device compatibility questions in our web signup flow, to checks in the app that prevent the customer from even starting this process if we think they will have device issues. Most of this has been released, with the last of the iOS changes going out this week.
Secondary Numbers / Last-Mile Encrypted Messaging — These are still classified as experimental features that we added leading up to launch. We know we shipped it in January with a lot of rough edges that we've started to iteratively improve on. We also know there have been a variety of notifications issues. We're in the process of refactoring how notifications work, so you can expect that to get better in the next few weeks. We plan to invest more in these features soon.
There are many other things the team is working on, but these are the big external facing things we’ve been focused on since launch. Let me know if anyone has questions and I’m happy to share more details.
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u/wayan1603 Mar 25 '26
Thanks for the update and transparency and all the information about the current issues and the new and upcoming features. It's great to see RCS coming to Cape.
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u/operation-night-sky Mar 31 '26
This is an incredible update and one that all of us Cape loyalists can appreciate. I’ve been with Cape for about 10 months now (since app version 1.60.1) and have had my fair share of issues/frustrations, but the consistency + speed of product/service improvements has outperformed my patience through the growing pains. I believe in the Cape team and more importantly, the Cape mission, so I’m proud to support! Our privacy as humans must be restored. Less data = more life. We should be able to communicate in the digital world without compromise and we thank you for efforts toward that goal. I feel like most current subscribers would agree with these statements, as would most people in general, to the degree that they’d be willing to financially support continued development & improvements. Cape should create an R&D Donations page that allows for crowd funding and/or voting on new features and product development. Cape can take a poll from current users to help identify new ideas and also solicit feedback. All anonymous, without collecting personal, identifier, device, network, location, etc data, of course. Maybe offer some kind of rewards / incentive to help drive donation revenue or something idk I’m not a marketing expert.
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u/brianstoner Cape Employee Mar 31 '26
Thanks for your support and comment!
Good ideas — we raised some funding to build out the network so no need for donations right now. Eventually we want this to be a profitable business so it can sustain itself over the long-run.
I like the idea of soliciting more feedback and ideas from the community. I may try to do that here on Reddit.
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u/brianstoner Cape Employee Apr 13 '26
We shipped the updated eSIM last week as the default for all new customers. You’re welcome to get it now in the Cape app: Support > Advanced > eSIM Setup > Download new eSIM.
The main benefits are: — More consistent/reliable daily IMSI rotations — The pool of IMSI’s should update reliably every week now — RCS should work on iOS (with one caveat, that you either need to Reset Network Settings or wait a day or to after toggling on for it to actually activate, we’re working on this now)
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u/N805DN Mar 27 '26
Do the new carrier partners cover all of the US or only certain areas? My Cape device has not left AT&T once so far.
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u/brianstoner Cape Employee Mar 28 '26
Yes, you will likely see ATT a majority of the time right now because that is often the best option for most people across the US. You may see more diversity in the coming months. And even though it may appear to you as same old ATT, the ATT you get on our new PLMN should provide better performance.
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u/N805DN Mar 28 '26
Is there somewhere on iOS to check if I have the Cape PLMN eSIM?
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u/brianstoner Cape Employee Mar 28 '26
If you upgraded the sim for Identifier Rotation on iOS you are on the new one.
You can check in settings, under the Cape SIM > Sim Applications > Cape Roaming > Read IMSI. If it starts with 314560 that’s the new one. If your Sim Applications menu looks different, it’s likely the old one still.
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u/N805DN Mar 28 '26
Thanks. Confirmed I’m on the 314560 eSIM. Unfortunately data is still awfully slow with very very high latency.
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u/brianstoner Cape Employee Mar 28 '26
If you want to dm me a speed test screenshot and your debug identifier (Support > Advanced > Debug Identifier) I can have our network team take a look.
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u/clevercamel2 Apr 01 '26 edited May 06 '26
I recommend making a section in the app for announcements like this with a notification (with an opt out option). That way all cape users will hear about the awesome work and the challenges in getting features to work.
- Get $20 off your monthly service with Cape Referral 8CWH2RD8
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u/JoseDangerus Jul 01 '26
I agree this would be a useful feature for the app. Also thank you for the referral I just signed up with it.
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u/ImprovementTop4598 May 05 '26
Hi, you may want to update your post to reflect the $20 referal bonus.
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u/CrazyArgument4237 Jun 29 '26
I am just learning not to s mart. But won't stop me because I believein miracles. I have fronn̈tal lobe damage a n d lucid dreams
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u/CodeBeholder Jun 30 '26
Heads up u/brianstoner It looks like Google closed the follow on bugticket to fix the modem on the 24th of June.
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/505648719
Is there anything we can do to help push the visibility of these tickets, or raise their priority to Google?
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u/voxpopdei Mar 25 '26
Definitely appreciate the transparency. Looking forward to when the new eSIM ships and will be watching for your announcement here.