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Comment by yapyap | Hacker News Reader

I like the initiative and I’m not against experimenting, it’s fun.

But why would you ever want an eSIM in a SIM device, I’d assume it’s more often the other way around

You may find yourself in that situation if you have a device that only supports SIMs, and you can't use any of the cheap travel esim providers with it. For travel, you would replace your local SIM with the 9eSIM, and be able to switch providers depending on destination. The difference can be huge in some countries, where a local provider's travel plan can be 30 to 50 USD, while a equivalent on an ESIM provider is just $4.

I live in such a country and have parents with older phones who can't use esims, so the value is obvious to me. :)

I have not yet traveled to a place that doesn't have cheap prepaid SIM on the Airport, or some Internet cafes.

Cheap is very subjective. There is always a way cheaper Esim option, especially if you have high usage.

Not the common Esim provider spamming all of Google. But you often find local Esim resellers for local networks.

Writing this from my Caravan WiFi, with a small streaming computer, 2 mobiles and a laptop using about 250 GB a month :)

In my experience, getting an eSIM is usually cheaper than the airport SIM card plans, but often there are cheaper plans available when you get to the city. In any case, having both options is nice!

>getting an eSIM is usually cheaper than the airport SIM card plans, but often there are cheaper plans available when you get to the city

I find that for light data users (ie. < 5GB), esims are always almost cheaper than local sims, except for maybe in developing countries.

I think it depends on how you define “developing countries”!

I’m currently in Thailand and I got 6 GB for about $2 total (50 baht for the SIM with 3 GB for 3 days, another 20 baht top up for another 3 GB / 3 days). I did use eSIM for about a month before that though (I just wanted a local number to order some stuff from Lazada).

Another example (also from Southeast Asia, FWIW): Malaysian SIMs are also cheaper, though topping them up is painful so I’d personally stick with an eSIM there.

Those are all developing countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IMF_advanced_economies_an...

What is the best way to find a cheap eSIM? Do you wait until you arrive in the country? Or can you ship somewhere before arriving?

Currently traveling, and the savings are real. Although in this case it’s the opposite: travel eSIMs rates are about $80 for data for 30 days, whereas a cheap local prepaid SIM card is $8-16 (but with no eSIM option)

Out of curiosity: where are you traveling with data that expensive?

The service is called Holafly, it was advertised on the plane, and my travel mate bought it without hesitating (because of the convenience of an eSIM, even though they didn’t get a local number)

I meant the physical destination, not the service :D

>it was advertised on the plane

That's basically guaranteed to be overpriced. Anything prominently advertised means you're going to be paying for the advertising budget.

Also, it's "unlimited data", which probably makes it more expensive than it needs to be due to adverse selection. For instance it charges $50 for 15 days in europe, but on esimdb[1] you can easily find esims for just over $1/gb. It might still be worth it if you're using absurd amounts of data, but citing it as an example of esims being very expensive doesn't really make sense.

https://esimdb.com/region/europe

I found my google maps app for navigation and image translation via google lens/translator app ate up a ton of my data. I had to turn off off a setting or two to reduce the maps data.

I don't know about europe but 40 to 80usd for 15GB for 30 days in Mexico is completely crazy when you can get a physical telcel sim card with 25GB and unlimited data for whatsapp and all major social medias, which means you can easily go for the smaller 10GB (15usd) or 7GB (10usd) choice if the most you will transfer is on social medias and whatsapp.

https://esimdb.com/mexico

I've encountered this in Cape Verde and ended buying a local SIM off the street for a fraction of the price.

In several countries, I've seen tourist SIMs offered by local operators in either eSIM or physical SIM for the same price.

In which countries are eSIMs cheaper? I have never encountered this in Africa or in Asia. I was just in Vietnam, a local SIM was probably 50% cheaper than anything I could find on esimdb.

Currently I'm in Georgia, unlimited internet for a week is 9 GEL, or around 3ish USD per week. The cheapest on esdimdb is 19 USD for unlimited internet for a week.

What we usually do when we travel is buy the cheapest eSIM, usually on some introductory offer to get like 1GB for 1 USD (so we can order taxis, maps etc), then go to a local provider and get a local SIM.

One place where an eSIM was a good choice was China. I don't quite understand how it works, but it seems if you use an eSIM in China you get around the great firewall without needing a VPN.

I wish eSIMs were cheaper, so I wouldn't have to deal with the headache of doing that. When going to local providers, sometimes they offer an eSIM option, but there is usually no price difference.

> I don't quite understand how it works, but it seems if you use an eSIM in China you get around the great firewall without needing a VPN.

That's just the default for most mobile data services, eSIM or physical SIM. Your home network provides Internet connectivity. "Local breakout" (where you get an IP of the visited network) has never really taken off for various reasons, one being that people actually like being able to access everything they also can at home.

I also strongly suspect that this is why iPhones in China don't have any eSIM capability.

I don't know if eSIMs are more expensive or less than a local SIM, but they are much more convenient for me when I travel. I can have working internet as soon as I step off the plane, which is great for finding transportation and not having to deal with kiosks that won't speak any language I know and might be closed. I don't have to hand over my passport to get a SIM, and in China they get around the firewall. The cost of an eSIM vs the cost of travel is too small to notice but the convenience is always noticed.

you can buy travel esim packages like arialo, that gives you easy data in a lot of countris.

I expected to use an eSIM when I went abroad for a month last year. It turned out the providers offering "travel eSIM" are 2 to 4 times more expensive compared to buying a prepaid physical sim at the counter valid for 30 days.

Quick note that "the counter" may not exist or be hard/time consuming to track down and then there may be language barriers and also identity proof requirements that you can't meet. So service that's available and working as soon as your boots hit the ground do have some value.

I sure hope you travel with a passport.

Aren't there this kind of shops in any major airport?

One announce with eSIM is that you can’t move them freely, despite being advertised as equivalent. Depending on the provider it can get quite complicated (physical visit in store, fees) to move to another device.

Could one make an all-software sim card emulator which would enable this?

Or does the esim spec have some kind of DRM to require you to use physical hardware with an embedded yet secret-to-you key?

There is SoftSIM, but I think it’s geared towards IOT applications: https://onomondo.com/product/softsim/

>Or does the esim spec have some kind of DRM to require you to use physical hardware with an embedded yet secret-to-you key?

Yes. Basically there's an accreditation process by the GSMA, and if your esim doesn't have a certificate chain leading back to GSMA, you won't be able to get your esim provisioned.

https://media.ccc.de/v/camp2023-57190-demystifying_esim_tech...

Sorry, move them from what to what? Surely an eSIM isn't locked to the first phone I use it on?

It is.

The QR codes that provision the eSIM are single-use.

Most "real" carriers will of course let you migrate your eSIMs, with varying degrees of pain involved (my Japanese eSIM migrated automatically from iPhone to iPhone; the German one involved making a phone call); but ~all "travel plans" eSIMS will be single-use only.

Oof, that's not great...

The QR codes aren't really single-use, my carrier reuses the QR code and you can move devices by removing the eSIM from one and re-importing the QR code on the newer. (The QR code is invalid so long as the eSIM is provisioned on a device, not necessarily powered on)

Chinese iPhone has no eSIM support (they have dual SIM instead), IoT stuff like alarms tend to use SIM slots, LTE/5G routers tend to use SIM, etc.

Until eSIM provisioning for embedded devices is sorted out and popularized there will be plenty of reasons to adapt to a regular SIM.

I got a second hand mobile router with SIM support, but very good hardware for 50$. I ordered a Esim adapter SIM for $20 and just switch to the cheapest network wherever I am.

Easily saved $300 to a comparable device with Esim support.

I can't speak to anyone else, but I have a phone about a year too old for e-sims to have been commonplace, but I still need to travel, and services like airalo (global sims to go) are basically e-sim only -- so my secondary sim slot is a reprogrammable eSIM.

Let’s say you land in a new country that your primary provider won’t roam to for free or at all, there’s no need to visit the airport shop that sells SIM cards with limited options and try to buy and set up something which is often in a different language.

You can buy your eSIM service at the best possible price ahead of time online and have it ready to go when you land, and you don’t have to upgrade your not-that-old phone to do so.

quote from TFA "Since I want to use the SIM with the integrated WWAN modem of a laptop running Linux, I was keen to see if I could get this all to work using Linux and Free software."

I clicked this as I don't think there's a phone meeting my prefrences (repairable, runs mostly mainline linuix) that has esim. There all regular sim. So something like this could expand options carrier wise.

Well, one nice thing is that a device like this allows you to use the services that are trying to lock you with an eSIM in the same way that you use a normal consumer friendly SIM.

Because you can buy cheap short term data plans in most countries online. Getting a physical prepaid SIM is often a pain, especially in places like the US.

Simply there are more eSIM providers than traditional SIM ones, so there's more competition and lower prices. That alone is enough.

Yep, it isn't as if there aren't cheap pre-paid throway SIM available as well.

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