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Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM
271–280 of 292 posts
Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM
#272I am quite annoyed by the people who don't see the issue with eSim because "they never had an issue" with it. It's like having one murder down your block and stating that you don't see the issue because nobody attempted to murder you so far. ESim are backed up as part of iCloud backups, had one dodgy carrier in Europe (Lyca) who never activated my eSim so I switched back to a new carrier but I had to get a transfer a…
So don't do business with dodgy telcos and stick to the big ones? And as a bonus the established players even have their own stores in every mall!
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Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately there's not much competition on providing low-latency data connections, so most travel esim providers don't advertise where their connections route through. It's not great when you're travelling and all your connections to local sites get routed through and geo-located to a different continent.
Esimdb does list the endpoint location, I got burned so many times by not paying attention that now this is the first thing I check.
What am I doing wrong here, I can't find that info anywhere on esimdb?
Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately there's not much competition on providing low-latency data connections, so most travel esim providers don't advertise where their connections route through. It's not great when you're travelling and all your connections to local sites get routed through and geo-located to a different continent.
I am currently traveling in the Philippines and used a cheap eSIM provider offering nearly unlimited data. The only problem was all the traffic was getting routed through China, and then I encountered a bunch of great firewall or geolocation restrictions. For example, Claude wouldn’t work because Anthropic doesn’t allow access to Claude in China.
Eep! I guess you do get what you pay for. I tend to stick with Airalo for that reason. It's more expensive, but there's also no monkey business like this.
Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
eSIM is also great for travel. There's a lot of competition on price and it's easy to check esimdb to find the cheapest carrier that meets your needs for a given trip. Download the eSIM in advance and you're good to go as soon as your plane lands
Bad for travel if you swap phones when you travel and have a plan that already provides data in other countries.
Why do you swap phones when you travel if your SIM is already associated with a plan that provides data there?
Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM
#276I am quite annoyed by the people who don't see the issue with eSim because "they never had an issue" with it. It's like having one murder down your block and stating that you don't see the issue because nobody attempted to murder you so far. ESim are backed up as part of iCloud backups, had one dodgy carrier in Europe (Lyca) who never activated my eSim so I switched back to a new carrier but I had to get a transfer a…
> I am quite annoyed by the people who don't see the issue with eSim because "they never had an issue" with it. It's like having one murder down your block and stating that you don't see the issue because nobody attempted to murder you so far. TBH that's most people on most subjects. First one that comes to mind: "I'm an honest citizen and never did anything wrong and never had a bank account frozen, hence it never h…
You sound like you had a murder down your block and you are scared (understandably), but if nobody else anywhere had any murders you should understand why they aren't scared.
My carrier lets me issue esims myself on their website. I can login, get a QR code, and scan it on my phone and the service just starts working.
Personally I find this preferable to having to go to a physical location, and the fact that I can issue a new sim card to myself anywhere in the world has been very helpful.
Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM
#277I am not positioned well to speak to it but a coworker who has spent decades in telcom said that another problem is the certificate authority that holds/controls the certificates to provision these sims. Just the consolidation of who is involved in securing the sims.
With physical sims, only your carrier has the encryption keys to be able to provision (and run e.g. a java program on the sim). With esims, that is not as tightly controlled. Coworker recommended I read about the "sim jacker" exploit, but I have not yet. If anyone is curious, I pass it along.
Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM
#278I am quite annoyed by the people who don't see the issue with eSim because "they never had an issue" with it. It's like having one murder down your block and stating that you don't see the issue because nobody attempted to murder you so far. ESim are backed up as part of iCloud backups, had one dodgy carrier in Europe (Lyca) who never activated my eSim so I switched back to a new carrier but I had to get a transfer a…
Is this because of an older version of iOS or specifically because of the shitty carrier? I can add and remove esims from my iPhone. I just recently added one for my new 17 Pro Max. It prompted me to login to Verizon and it "just worked". There is an option right there to delete the Verizon esim. Nothing restricted or difficult about it.
Try doing it without any sort of data connection, where the phone can't ask the carrier to deprovision the esim.
Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am currently traveling in the Philippines and used a cheap eSIM provider offering nearly unlimited data. The only problem was all the traffic was getting routed through China, and then I encountered a bunch of great firewall or geolocation restrictions. For example, Claude wouldn’t work because Anthropic doesn’t allow access to Claude in China.
Eep! I guess you do get what you pay for. I tend to stick with Airalo for that reason. It's more expensive, but there's also no monkey business like this.
Airalo definitely does not always have endpoints in the country they're selling the esim for - I contacted their support a year or so ago and their response then was that they explicitly do not give any IP address or routing guarantees or information.
Re: Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
not all airports have that. and even when they do I have had to fight to stay online or get online requiring entering email and clicking the link in the email before being granted online access.
What’s wrong with provisioning the esim in advance then? Android and iOS both support loading many (8?) esims and swapping the active one(s)
That can work. I don't really know if it is going to work when I land.