IoT and eSIM
While eSIM opens up choice and flexibility in consumer mobile markets, the benefits it offers to IoT are of a different order. When it comes to the mass deployment of connected devices, perhaps over a very wide geographic area in examples like utilities management, smart city infrastructure and connected vehicles, the physical act of having to remove or insert a SIM card to launch, change or upgrade network connections has proven to be a major barrier to the growth of M2M markets.
Thomas Larsson, Business Development Director at G+D Mobile Security, said: “eSIM marks a new shift of the market, unlocking the true potential for IoT. Thus far, the growth of global IoT services has been limited by device makers having to manage separate carriers’ connectivity, invoices, device configurations, SIM cards or leverage expensive roaming services.”
Telus’s Andrei Ivanov told us: “One of the biggest challenges for IoT is serviceability of devices. E-SIM helps here by removing labour to put SIM in the device and by providing remote access to devices through connections enabled by e-SIM.”
One of the biggest challenges for IoT is serviceability of devices.
From there, Telna’s Gregory Gundelfinger sees e-SIM offering numerous other benefits to IoT / M2M markets. “E-SIM is a game changer for IoT devices because it accelerates time to market, allows scalability on-demand and faster deployments with lower up-front costs,” he said. “E-SIM makes it easier to deploy IoT solutions at a global scale for applications and devices located across multiple geographies. All the devices can be provisioned over the air, managed in real time and connected to different networks depending on what works best for each particular application or timing.”
From an OEM’s perspective, e-SIM makes it easier to develop connected devices according to a single global model that can be distributed worldwide with connectivity embedded, without having to worry about cards made elsewhere and inserted further down the value chain. For end users, seamless connectivity that can be managed digitally gives them the reassurance that networked devices will ‘just work’ and continue to feed the data streams that they need to improve their own operations wherever they are deployed.
Of course, for operators and service providers, delivering the kind of connectivity that ‘just works’ for billions of devices across dozens of industry verticals presents technical challenges, one of which is ensuring interoperability between many different types of devices and different networks.
While one of the key purposes of the GSMA standard is to ensure that any eSIM can be provisioned by any service provider in any device, this is not an easy goal to achieve in a huge global ecosystem with many tens of thousands of stakeholders. Dr. Frank 0berhokamp, Business Development Manager at COMPRION, explained: “Different interpretations [of the standard] on the part of the developers and MNO-specific business cases that cannot be covered 100% by any specification lead to actual interoperability issues.”
Andrei Ivanov believes having separate standards for consumer and M2M e-SIM creates problems for interoperability and even potentially encourages SIM manufacturers to take a proprietary view in their interpretations. “Fragmentation of the standard between consumer and M2M eSIM does not help as operators then need multiple platforms and multiple architectures,” he said. “Unfortunately, incumbent SIM manufacturers see this fragmentation as an additional monetisation opportunity and GSMA is not aggressive enough in harmonising both standards.”
Gregory Gundelfinger argues that cloud portal infrastructures and flexible API integrations are key to achieving interoperability through e-SIM. Use of APIs and open standards-based technologies like the GSMA e-SIM specifications must also be built into operators’ existing BSS/OSS environments. This will ensure BSS and OSS are up to speed with the requirements of multi-device deployments and are capable of integrating with the likes of subscription management platforms, entitlements management and online carrier portals.
Furthermore, open standards-based OSS and BSS will provide the foundations for closer partnerships between operators and IoT application providers.
