from Hacker News

Demystifying ESIM Technology [video]

by awat on 8/20/23, 3:50 PM with 83 comments

  • by wkat4242 on 8/20/23, 5:03 PM

    For who wonders about the waving cat: These are used a lot at hacker conferences to check if the cams are still working (and not frozen). Shenanigans on the network are of course common at these events :) So they are put on the stages while nothing is on.

    This was a big success and it turned out to be a bit of a mascotte :P They've become a permanent fixture now.

  • by richarme on 8/20/23, 9:25 PM

    My master's thesis from 2008 [0] gives some insight into the early design and strategic considerations (from a Nokia perspective) behind eSIM technology, in case anyone's curious.

    [0] http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/pubdb/edoc/imm6812.pdf

  • by notpushkin on 8/20/23, 6:14 PM

    Any idea how one can get hands on consumer-profile eUICC cards (or chips)? I've wanted to play around with eSIM (and perhaps use it for travel purposes), but don't want to upgrade my phone just yet.

    Found this one, but it's for testing only: https://www.smartjac.biz/esim-subscription-management/consum...

  • by anderspitman on 8/20/23, 4:39 PM

    I've had a great experience with eSIMs these past few days during a trip to Europe (coming from the US). It's so convenient to be able to arrive at a city and use airport wifi to download a mobile data package for a few bucks. The process is slightly clunky but not bad at all.
  • by HumblyTossed on 8/20/23, 7:25 PM

    For those with multiple phones, how easy is switching back and forth?
  • by markdown on 8/21/23, 3:10 AM

    Fun fact: Singapore doesn't support eSIM at all. Very strange, given that that country is relatively progressive when it comes to tech.
  • by Titan2189 on 8/21/23, 3:55 AM

    Anything from Harald Welte (LaF0rge) is awesome. He's the world's best GSM / Phone hacker / explainer
  • by badrabbit on 8/21/23, 11:12 AM

    Why did they change ccc to be at the same time as defcon instead of end of year?
  • by eimrine on 8/20/23, 6:24 PM

    Esim is a death for featured phones.
  • by Veliladon on 8/20/23, 5:13 PM

    We really dodged a bullet on eSIM. The implementation could have really sucked if the carriers controlled it from the start. Apple do a lot of dumb shit but they set a really high bar for an eSIM implementation for others to match.