Leveraging eSIM to improve the digital customer experience

In today’s digital age, experience is the product, and successful Internet companies have executed on this theme elegantly by providing simple and delightful experiences to their users. Communications service providers (CSPs) have taken this playbook and are increasingly focused on enhancing the digital experience to drive customer loyalty and retention. The eSIM is another step towards delivering a fully digital customer journey.

Digitization accelerates as customers shun retail stores and call centers

Activating a wireless service using physical SIMs has always been a cumbersome process requiring a visit to a retail store or calling a call center. eSIM technology, which is essentially a softwareized version of the traditional SIM card, has generally been viewed with skepticism by CSPs due to a perceived risk of churn and disintermediation. However, eSIM does provide a low-cost acquisition opportunity for high ARPU customers and an enhanced digital customer experience.

Major OEMs and hardware providers such as Apple and Google are pushing CSPs for the rapid adoption of eSIM as physical SIMs occupy precious real estate in the device.

Savvy CSPs are increasingly embracing eSIM technology because they see an accretive impact on their bottom lines by:

• Eliminating the cost of producing, storing and distributing physical SIM cards through the dealer network.


• Improving customer experience with a clean, digital onboarding process.


• Acquiring high ARPU customers who own higher end eSIM enabled devices.


• Allowing customers to activate wireless services without needing to visit a retail store during COVID-19.

The user experience today for activating wireless services using eSIM is less than desirable

For many CSPs around the world, a customer still has to visit a retail store and see an agent to provision the device, download the app, request a QR code, scan the QR code using their phone and finally make changes in the device settings. Many customers neither have the patience or are we willing to deal with this complex and confusing process. We refer to this complex activation process as “being your own CTO.”

There is a way for CSPs to leapfrog the current status quo

Now CSPs can offer their customers an intuitive and easy-to-use process to activate and provision connectivity on their devices using eSIM. Just as Amazon revolutionized eCommerce with its invention of the one-click checkout, the activation of wireless services using eSIM should not take more than a few clicks. This will unleash the potential of eSIM and provide customers a truly digital experience for activating, provisioning and number porting via eSIM. No more visits to a retail store, no requirement to scan a QR code, and no need to call into customer service for new device activation or upgrade.

To deliver on this vision, CSPs need a complete eSIM solution consisting of a front-end mobile application, and back-end orchestration components integrated into the existing business support systems (BSS) and subscription manager data preparation (SM-DP+) server. The solution should serve all devices that customers use including smartphones, tablets and laptops that have eSIM capability. The front-end mobile application should provide a user experience that is simple, intuitive and efficient for wireless service activation, provisioning and porting because this is what customers have come to expect from the brands they interact with on a daily basis.

The only question that remains is - will CSPs embrace eSIM technology to provide a delightful digital experience or resist it due to fear of churn?