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Comment by wklauss | Hacker News Reader

All of these things you mention are real trends, but they are not tied to eSIM.

1. eSIM standard supports transferring of eSIM profile from one phone to another. physical SIMs can be tied to specific IMEIs (and it use to be VERY common) 2. You can use eSIMS on unlocked phones. 3. Burner phones can still exist! Nothing prevents a phone company or MVNO from offering eSIMs the same way they did SIMs before (obviously local law might force you to provide ID, but this has been the case with SIMs as well in various countries)

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>1. eSIM standard supports transferring of eSIM profile from one phone to another

Source? The only implementation I know of is on iOS, which allows you to transfer esims between phones that are on the same icloud account. For every other phone the solution was to get a new QR code from the provider.

You simply unregister the eSim on the first phone and then scan the QR code on the new phone, it works "offline" too.

Unfortunately, that's not true for all eSIMs I've used – some activation codes are single-use, and you have to contact the provider to issue a new one every time. Some of them even charge for that...

But I agree that this is exclusively a policy problem, not a technical problem with eSIM, which clearly supports reusable profiles as well.

I would still call that a technical problem, fundamentally. If the technical failing didn't exist, then businesses would be unable to create the user-hostile policy to decommodify the market.

But they are able to do exactly the same thing with physical SIMs! So what‘s the difference?

There is still a difference in that doing this to a physical SIM requires the carrier going out of their way to integrate a check with the automated SIM setup process, whereas with eSIM such activation request would seem to be an inherent step of the process.

I do agree that cell protocols in general need to be reformed to get rid of static device identifiers like IMEI. I'd go even further and say that the tamper proof aspect of SIMs should be eliminated - the application processor can store the key to auth to the network, putting the user in control rather than suffering arbitrary top-down restrictions enforced by hardware they purportedly own. Though obviously that's a pipe dream while regulators continue to work for Ma Bell.

It depends on the carrier implementation. Here in Italy both TIM and Vodafone allow for infinite rescan of the same qrcode, Wind3 does not.

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