Updating millions of physical SIM cards wouldn’t just be a challenge, it would be almost impossible. But consider that businesses have already begun ramping up their fleets of IoT devices-embedding them into everything from automobiles to shipping palettes.Īs the number of consumer smart home and business IoT applications skyrockets, it’s easy to imagine a day when enterprises manage millions of IoT devices. These challenges are difficult enough with today’s existing array of smartphones, tablets, readers and other consumer mobile devices. Theft. The ability to physically remove a card from a device makes it easy to steal, which happens countless times every day, around the world.Durability. Physical SIM cards can be easily dislodged and damaged.The cost and logistical complexity of physically doing this makes SIM card technology untenable for deploying large numbers of devices-such as in industrial IoT, IoT logistics or smart cities applications. Management. Organizations that manage inventories of mobile devices must purchase, track and manage every SIM card under its control.This creates a design challenge for device makers that may need that space for an important feature. Size. As IoT and connected consumer devices continue to shrink, a physical SIM card occupies a relatively larger proportion of a device.While swapping a smartphone’s SIM card before travelling overseas is an inconvenience for consumers, it’s debilitating for a business that could easily have thousands of IoT devices throughout the enterprise.Īdditional detail on the challenges associated with physical SIM cards include: According to market research firm IoT Analytics, the number of IoT devices on the market will grow to 10 billion by 2020 and 22 billion by 2025. SIM cards must be physically swapped when their host device changes networks - and who carries around a SIM removal tool anyway? Improving on SIM card designĪs the IoT market matures and many millions of additional IoT devices flood the market, this physical constraint becomes more difficult and expensive to accommodate. Yet despite their ubiquity, they are not without design constraints. Traditional SIM cards are everywhere there are countless millions active on mobile networks today. Updating millions of physical SIM cards in the Internet of Things wouldn’t just be a challenge, it’d be almost impossible.Ĭellular network providers use SIM cards to store profiles that authenticate a device for use on the provider’s network, and to provide secure identification and storage, among other functions. Legacy SIMs are based on the familiar, removable cards that we’ve all seen (and probably dropped) at some point. To understand the relationship between eSIM and iSIM it’s helpful to understand why the eSIM standard emerged in the first place.ĮSIM evolved as an alternative to traditional SIM technology. “They realize that you have more chance of success if you have a common way of doing this, rather than everybody creating their own proprietary solutions.” Anyone got a SIM removal tool? “Most of the industry is actively supporting efforts to establish iSIM as a standard,” Waite said about the iSIM standards setting process. Industry support for iSIM was a key point that emerged when I spoke recently with Gary Waite, a systems architect for the GSMA and an expert on next-generation SIM standards. iSIM is a more recent development and hasn’t been declared a standard as yet, but it already enjoys broad industry support. eSIM was the initial innovation, based on the open, vendor-neutral standard developed by the GSMA. Think of eSIM and iSIM as siblings: two distinct individuals with many shared traits-but also some important differences.ĮSIM and iSIM are technologies for authenticating subscribers and devices on mobile networks.
eSIM and iSIM: Drivers of innovation and opportunity This is especially true of two recent advances in SIM technology: embedded SIM (eSIM) and integrated SIM (iSIM). However, as we march toward a world of increasingly-connected people, devices and machines in the Internet of things (IoT), SIM technology will become critical. When they’re not being fumbled in and out of mobile devices, SIM cards are generally forgotten about - a modest, background technology responsible for authenticating subscribers on a mobile network, setting up a new phone or upgrading a mobile device. The SIM card, or subscriber identity module, is nobody’s idea of glamorous or cutting-edge technology: a fiddly plastic rectangle-cum-square that requires the tricky procurement and juggling of paperclips, staples or even stud earrings to eject.