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Restricting users to "approved" devices seems to be a US thing? I'm fairly sure that anything that's capable of connecting with the right frequencies and protocols can connect to any UK network.

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This isn’t the case for these watches in the UK as well, as they only work on certain partner networks, but I’m unsure whether this is due to the GP claim or something else.

That seems more likely to be due to the device being network locked, rather than the networks disallowing them?

Can't quite speak for UK, but in EU cases I know about its because some (popular) watches need special provisioning process for eSIMs and getting that proprietary software requires carrier to beg our favorite mega corps for provisioning software and do extra work.

It's not like phones where pSIMs were relatively brand agnostic, were back to per-hardware BS.

I have a Pixel Watch 2, it seems that only certain carriers (typically not MVNOs) can set it up with an eSIM that will present as having the same number, but any MVNO that provides eSIM setup via QR code should work to provision via the connected phone.

I can imagine Apple being less inclined to allow arbitrary eSIMs on their watches, preferring to only support the case where the eSIM is guaranteed to support the "correct" presentation.

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