[onion2k]

Dealing with the carrier is usually the worst part of owning a phone. Asking for a new esim is likely to send you down a path of navigating a process where they try to sell you an upgrade, or they send you a QR code that doesn't work, or a million other possible problems.

[vladvasiliu]

> Dealing with the carrier is usually the worst part of owning a phone.

It's probably intentional. I was reading an article in the French press the other day [0] on the subject. Some head of something or other in the industry said they were weary of mostly Apple, Samsung, and Google starting to like playing the providers and removing the actual carriers from the users' psyche. "The SIM card is the last physical link between the carrier and the client".

I've also checked my carrier's site for getting an esim. Apparently I'd have to pay the same amount to get one as for a physical one (minus delivery costs). But at least, contrary to some other commenters' situation, they seem to allow you to move it from phone to phone as long as you hold on to your qr code. They, of course, don't offer the option of storing it in the "secure" client area.

[0] https://www.lefigaro.fr/secteur/high-tech/avec-l-esim-la-car...

[criddell]

When I bought my phone last year at a carrier store, they really, really pushed me to get a physical SIM card. I asked them why they wanted me to install a physical SIM they told me I’ll get higher data speeds.

[pyr0hu]

In my case, it was two clicks in the carrier's web interface and I got the new QR code showed me and even sent by email. No upgrades, no dark patterns, just presented a QR code, I scanned it, worked. It took like 2 minutes

[onion2k]

Warning: Rant

Yes, but what does that tell us? How is that useful? All you've done is point out a situation where the happy path works. If you have a great carrier whose systems are working correctly then it's going to be fine. That's what you'd expect. No one really cares about the cases where things go right. They're boring. They should be boring. The problem is never what happens when it works, but what happens when it doesn't work.

I've spent the past two and a half decades learning that the happy path is the least interesting part of any system. Building a working app is about 10% of the work of building anything. The other 90% is error handling, designing processes to get things back on track, and managing when things change. If you focus on the bit that works, and you assume that things will work, and that any human part of the system works (where code is written by humans) it is bound to break at some point.

The issue here is that taking a physical sim card works and dropping it in a different handset has far fewer moving parts and it's all stuff that's been proven over the past 30 years. There is less to go wrong. As soon as you start adding carriers and their shitty websites into the mix things will screw up for a non-trivial number of users.

[otterley]

How about we wait and see if this actually happens instead of prematurely complaining that the sky is falling?

All indications so far are that eSIMs work quite well. Plus it’s pretty awesome to be able to purchase prepaid service through a company like Airalo when traveling abroad and to be able to use it instantly. Same goes for switching carriers.

[onion2k]

How about we wait and see if this actually happens instead of prematurely complaining that the sky is falling?

Generally speaking, leaving something to see if it'll work means it's too late to change things easily if doesn't work. Managing change is one of the hardest things to do in any company, let alone industry, so finding the problems during the testing phase is really important. If it gets to the consumer and things aren't working (which happens a lot) that means people screwed up.

Buying a local sim card and putting it in your phone when you're travelling works fine, and instantly, so eSIMs aren't offering any advantage there besides not needing to go to a local shop.

[otterley]

And that is a huge advantage both for consumers and providers. You’re grossly underrating the benefits to commerce and the reduction of purchase friction.