Ofcom has published a report on the imminent move from traditional form factor SIMs to reprogrammable SIMs — eUICC modules.
As we see an expansion of devices using the cellular network to include smart meters, cars, potentially medical devices and other products, the need for an ultra small form factor, non-removeable SIM is increasing, and eUICC is one of the proposed mechanisms for achieving this.
From an operator point of view, this is potentially quite scary — whole countries of smart meters could be switched from one provider to another in a matter of seconds, or even jumping between multiple providers per day, leveraging the best pricing deals. Conversely, there needs to be a secure, trusted mechanism for enabling over the air updating.
Plenty of nice juicy legal issues here!
Yes, this has been on the standardisation table for a while (probably 2 years now).
ReplyDeleteThere are many parameters on the USIM which cannnot be easily overwitten, ex. security related parameters among others. The discussions wer in maybe having a neutral entity which should perform the switching.
This is also required for eUICCs embeded in cars/ transport and might be used for different reasons including toll payment, a car being sold andtaken to another country, etc...
I do not follow the USIM group in ETSI, so I am not up to date on the progress on this front.
I haven't followed the ETSI side of things either, to be honest — but I wrote Vodafone's response to the GSMA on the legal aspects of this, and contributed a lot to the GSMA legal position paper (which, sadly, still seems to be confidential).
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