Sierra Wireless Offers eUICC Connectivity Service

Sierra Wireless, a provider of end-to-end solutions for IoT applications, has introduced an Embedded Universal Integrated Circuit Card (eUICC) solution for its global Smart SIM and connectivity service. This is one of the first to market that conforms to the latest GSMA specification, Sierra said.

“Machina Research forecasts that annual sales of IoT SIMs supporting eUICC will grow from less than one million in 2014 to 227 million devices per year by 2024, representing almost 50 percent of all SIMs sold,” said Godfrey Chua, Principal Analyst, Machina Research. “With its strong position in cellular IoT, Sierra Wireless is well positioned to benefit from the opportunity we see associated with IoT connections that depend on eUICC.”

Also commonly referred to as eSIM, eUICC allows users to remotely provision and change service providers over the air (OTA) without physically accessing the SIM card. This provides a global, operator independent connectivity solution.

“eUICC represents the most radical change in over two decades of GSM connectivity, because it allows customers to select and change service provider profiles based on the criteria or business rules of their choosing,” said Andrew Brown, executive director, Enterprise and IoT Research, Strategy Analytics. “This allows businesses to think globally and expand their offerings from products to connected services.”

The eUICC capability is fully compliant with the GSMA Embedded SIM Specification, Version 3.1, and will be available for Sierra Wireless Smart connectivity in December 2016.

“The GSMA’s specification for Remote SIM Provisioning for M2M is helping operators to provide scalable, reliable and secure connectivity to a range of diverse services with a number of commercial solutions already in market,” said Graham Trickey, Head of Connected Living, GSMA. “A common and interoperable approach to Remote SIM Provisioning for M2M solutions gives assurance that products are aligned with industry specifications and can support the functional requirements for the remote management of connectivity services with at least the same level of integrity and security as a traditional removable SIM.”