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Comment by harha | Hacker News Reader

Incredibly annoying - advertised "better than SIM", but really just a massive inconvenience.

The only good use-case (for the user) is buying travel eSIMs.

What's baffling is the eSIM market seems to be substantially less competitive - you can almost always buy a local physical SIM with far more data for the same price. You'd think the cost for providing an eSIM would be less and MVNO's would be competing to drive it down.

Yeah and here in Europe most carriers don't even support eSIM on prepaid services at all.

I always use prepaid as i hate nasty contract surprises and also because its actually cheaper here with most carriers!

Agree - especially annoying that there’s no reasonable and cheap plan across countries, checkout and search isn't much easier than getting a SIM card at the airport

Except in Germany, where you just can't buy a local SIM at all.

Actually I take that back, shady shops will sell you a SIM that can't be activated.

I'm unsure what you are talking about. I was in Germany recently and got an O2 Deutschland sim card without issue. I had to show my passport, but it was an easy process.

Things do change, so I did a quick internet search. Found plenty of websites with information on how to purchase and activate sim cards.

https://www.phonetravelwiz.com/buying-a-sim-card-in-germany-... https://abrokenbackpack.com/germany-sim-cards/

many others.

From what I've gathered, things can be a bit more difficult if you have a more exotic identity document and either want to use one of the cheaper MVNO providers (which generally don't operate any physical stores at all), or aren't in a position to visit the physical branch of one of the major carriers (Telekom, O2, Vodafone).

In that case customer identification is commonly done via the post office's Postident system (either at a physical post office, or online via video) or via some alternative video chat system, and those might not work for all passports from all countries worldwide.

>What's baffling is the eSIM market seems to be substantially less competitive - you can almost always buy a local physical SIM with far more data for the same price

Which countries? Of the few countries I traveled to, the cheapest esim (by using a esim comparison site) is cheaper than local sims for any reasonable amount of data (eg. 3 GB for a 2 week trip). The local sims sold at the airport might be "cheaper" on a per-GB basis, but they come with absurd amounts of data that you couldn't possibly use (eg. 30GB) so they are more expensive in actuality.

Esims-via-app usually seem to be permanently roaming.

That means I assume they are paying roaming rates to the local providers.

Another good use-case for eSIMs, at least in EU where carriers have to transfer your number within 24 hours, is moving number between carriers. Before, this involved waiting for new SIM arriving by snail mail, or having to drive to carrier's shop to pick it up, sometimes while your number was already deactivated at old carrier. With eSIM it recently took me less than 1 hour from requesting a number transfer to using it with new carrier, all without leaving house.

But it all depends on the carrier now - I heard stories of carriers who won't send you the QR code, instead requiring you to drive to their store so they can show it to you in person "for security", defeating the whole purpose.

I don't think such EU regulation exists. I transferred my number from one operator to a competitor recently. There was a one week (I believe) warning period that the transfer was announced, but could still have been cancelled.

The old operator used the week to make me 3 increasing discount offers. Had I switched just for economic reasons I could have cancelled the operation on Saturday just before the scheduled transfer at Monday noon and saved a bit of money.

The relevant EU regulation on the matter is this[1]:

> The porting of numbers and their subsequent activation shall be carried out within the shortest possible time on the date explicitly agreed with the end-user. In any case, end-users who have concluded an agreement to port a number to a new provider shall have that number activated within one working day from the date agreed with the end-user.

My legalese is not good enough to understand what this means. The original text from the 2009 Telecoms Package[2] is worded slightly differently. Maybe member states failed to achieve the original intent and it was weakened to the current wording (as indeed, it takes longer than a day in many EU countries).

1: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A... article 106, paragraph 5

2: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A... article 30, paragraph 4

I was referring to Directive 2009/136/EC Article 30 "Facilitating change of provider". https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

> Porting of numbers and their subsequent activation shall be carried out within the shortest possible time. In any case, subscribers who have concluded an agreement to port a number to a new undertaking shall have that number activated within one working day.

> In any event, loss of service during the process of porting shall not exceed one working day.

It exists for sure in the UK (you should complain to Ofcom as regulator in your case) - I would assume it's the same in the EU because it's not new, and the kind of thing we shared.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_number_portability#Euro... suggests it’s not necessarily 24 hours.

Ok I was wrong, from the overview there:

> From 1 July 2019 as a result of new rules from Ofcom, In the UK a customer can request a PAC without having to speak to their provider by texting PAC to 65075.

So it's more recent than I thought (the requirement, the 'donor-led' nature it mentions and ability to do it by text has definitely existed longer at least with willing networks) and UK thing postdating leaving the EU.

In the UK you can get a new SIM and then transfer the number, so waiting for the new SIM to arrive by post which means there is no risk of having your number deactivated before you have your new SIM or any need to leave the house.

Once you have the new SIM the transfer is pretty quick.

The problem you are describing is therefore a regulatory one, not a technical one.

I went through porting my number in Poland 3 times, and the time between my request and the porting was about a month, so plenty of time to receive the SIM card via snail mail. In one of the cases, I walked out of the new carrier’s store with an inactive SIM card in hand.

That's a huge use case though. Travel eSIMs are much more convenient than landing at an airport, finding a store that has SIMs, hoping they are open, etc.

Yep, I always buy a eSIM whenever I travel because that's the only way my phone can do dual-SIM, and it's also convenient in case I come to that country again. I'd never use eSIM for my real phone number though. I don't trust software nearly as much.

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