eSIM: Now Maybe?

Back in February 2021, LotusFlare asked the question, could eSIM revive roaming revenues? The thought was that global travel would rebound out of the COVID pandemic and that the prospect of eSIM would entice operators to take advantage to make onboarding of roamers in their market much easier and try and capture more roaming revenue.

As we stand in November 2022, global travel has rebounded. But the great move to eSIM by communications services providers? Well, not so much. Why eSIM adoption has been slow is well-documented - here’s a good summary - so no need to review that. The story is not all gloom - two things stand out.

First, it is clear that eSIM is well-placed to change the roaming experience and there’s massive appeal of the eSIM experience. LotusFlare is certain about this, because it offers Nomad, a service that provides travelers near-local data rates through the magic of eSIM. You can get the app for iOS and Android.

The Nomad experience for customers has been very positive and the consumers’ feedback is that they appreciate not being burned by data roaming charges and - more importantly - eSIM makes the experience convenient and simple and easy to repeat. eSIM is proven to simplify the experience of roaming.

Second, device makers are going all eSIM and CSPs will have a choice but to implement eSIM going forward. In July 2020, the GSMA offered that their “baseline scenario predicts around 850 million eSIM smartphone connections globally by 2025, growing to 6.7 billion by 2030.”

With the US iPhone 14 and 14 Pro (launched in September 2022) going all eSIM, that was probably the push that CSPs needed to rouse from their eSIM slumber. And again this comes directly from LotusFlare experience, to be precise from, LotusFlare eSIM, a cloud-native SaaS component of our LotusFlare DNO Cloud that manages eSIM orchestration.

So, eSIM, now maybe? From LotusFlare’s vantage point, evidence suggests that the time is finally right. CSPs are now being pushed begrudgingly to eSIM but in the end, consumers will benefit and CSPs will take another step along their road of digital transformation when it comes to customer onboarding. Adopting eSIM will make their customers happier and eSIM-enabled CSPs will be perceived as more digital and focused on providing simplified experience.

LOTUS FLARE

LotusFlare

eSim

global travel

Nomad app

roaming

eSim technology

communication services

LotusFlare eSIM

LotusFlare DNO Cloud

special edition newsletter

Digital Transformation Roadmap to eFuture