Don’t you just love standards and how SGP.32 and SPOG roll off the tongue. SGP.32 is important as a standard for a number of reasons.
The primary one, from my perspective, is kitting where the device had to be touched twice – once by the manufacturer and once by the deploying party to put a physical SIM inside. Most of us have probably watched as this has happened (or waited while they went to the back room) when we bought a phone in the past. For IoT, this was much worse, as SIMs were being inserted by the country/MNO territory in which they were being deployed. Integrators or enterprises would hold on to a bunch of boxes of SIMs being stored based on the volume expected to be used per location.
Besides the simplification and enablement of remote provisioning, I have already written about how it puts an end to the one-throat-to-choke adage by giving MVNOs parity with MNOs in outage prevention.
Another aspect is how easy it is to change profile status. This reduces the risk of enterprises being falsely charged for SIMs that are not yet active, and allowing actions like enabling, deleting, disabling, and triggering reset as patches and upgrades are downloaded. Keep in mind that many IoT devices are remote with little or no “hands and eyes” to retrieve them, which was necessary with many physical SIMs.
The ability to centrally manage remotely is a core ingredient to the single pane of glass desired by enterprises and carriers that are looking to manage multiple service providers and multiple network profiles and different device vendors.
Transforma Insights points out that a new line of business has been created where an eSIM orchestrator can provide additional networking capabilities and facilitate relationships between providers without having to have direct negotiations. A good example of this strategy is floLIVE, which has built its own core network to provide an easy way for other MVNOs to expand and support remote markets.
This changes the requirements for the current Connectivity Management Platforms, such as Aeris Connectivity Management (formerly Ericsson’s solution), Cisco’s IoT Control Center and Nokia Wing, as well as the internal systems of carriers such as Verizon and Vodafone. It impacts operating support systems, particularly billing.
Whether the business model is to be a network operator, reseller, or an eSIM orchestrator, 2025 promises to be an active year of announcements, such as the one between AT&T and Eseye.
Edited by
Erik Linask
