Basically we're going back to the USA-style CDMA days where the carrier is in full control of your experience, which worries me.
I agree they're great for the use case of just buying a travel eSIM and activating that.
There's also now the option to just keep your primary phone number on a cheap plan, and have multiple other eSIMs for data usage. There's no longer the problem with having to contact a carrier to switch data plans if used in this way.
Though, hopefully in time they will improve the experience anyway.
What exactly did eSIM enable here? With dual SIM phones, you can even put one data SIM and one number SIM in a single phone at the same time. Plus it's simple and easy to move either SIM to any other SIM-compatible device at any time.
Some examples include
* Backup service in the event that an attacker gains access to your Google Fi account. A backup eSIM with data service for a year has pricing starting at like $2.
* Fast network access in other countries. As far as I know, Google Fi is a carrier in the United States, and does not include network access in other countries.
* Deprioritized on data? The ability to instantly buy a major carrier eSIM and have the data speeds back.
Google Fi offers network access in over 200 countries.