IoT M2M Council - IoT Days Summer

eSIM, iSIM – Everybody’s Talking Subscriber Identity Modules

About

The eSIM allows for great flexibility in choosing connectivity providers around the world and is a proven technology, at this point. The iSIM integrates connectivity functions directly into central processors without additional hardware, allowing for design flexibility and reducing power consumption.

This session will dive into the applications most suited for these next-generation SIMs – and explore where SIM technology is headed next.

Transcript

Hello, this is Keith Kreisher, the Executive Director of the IoT M2M Council,

or IMC. And it's my pleasure to welcome you all to this webinar on SIM technology,

brought to you by the IMC. I certainly hope everyone joining us today is staying

safe and well in these interesting times. The topic for today's panel discussion is

the latest gen SIM technology in the panel will be moderated by my good friend Jim

Morish, founder and principal at Transforma Insights, one of the best known analyst

firms in the IoT sector. And the panel will feature a Vodafone IoT, Teletcentarian

and Pelion for the next 45 minutes or so. Then we'll have a brief spotlight

presentation on Sims from A1 Digital. I'll hand off to Jim in just a minute,

but first, before we begin, I wanted to cover a few housekeeping items. This webcast

is being streamed through your computer, so there is no dial -in number. For the

best audio quality, please make sure your computer speakers or headset are turned on

and the volume is up so you can hear the presenters. An on -demand version of the

webcast will be available later today and can be accessed using the same audience

link sent to you earlier. Also, materials from the presenters are available in the

handouts section of the webinar interface. We encourage everyone in the audience to

check that out. If you have any questions during the webcast, you can submit them

through the Q &A box on the right side of your screen. The presenters may answer

questions at the end of each session, but please feel free to ask questions at any

time during the presentations. Any unanswered questions will be responded to offline.

We will have a record of your question associated with your registration, so we will

get back to you. For those of you that do not know the IMC, perhaps just a quick

word of introduction. The IMC is the largest trade organization dedicated to the

global IoT sector. Its membership is comprised of 28 ,000 rank and file adopter

members who are individual enterprise users, product makers, OEMs and apps developers

that deploy IoT solutions in the field. The IMC's Board of Governors includes 35 of

the most influential IoT technology companies that are providing solutions in the form

of hardware, software and connectivity. We encourage anybody attending today to check

out our website at iotm2mcouncil .org. On that website,

you'll find information about the IMC's newest initiative, just to really announce

publish publicly recently, and that is a joint task force on IoT security formed

with the Global Certification Forum. There's lots going on in the area of IoT

security right now. In fact, we've got another session on that immediately following

this one. What makes our initiative unique is that it covers not just IoT devices,

but also networks and cloud app platforms. So please take a look at that on the

IMC website. Moving on to today's session, the mission of the IMC is to accelerate

the adoption of IoT technology for the public good. And we look at today's session

on sim technologies exactly in keeping with that mission. So now it's my pleasure to

introduce Jim Morsch from Transformer Insights. Jim, take us away.

Thank you, Keith. Hello everybody and welcome to this session. This is a panel

session and it is entitled eSIM /ICIM Everybody's talking about subscriber identity

modules. I'm Jim Morish I'm half the founding partners of a company called

Transformer Insights. We're a firm of INS journalists specializing in IoT and many

technologies which enable digital transformation. But today is all about eSIM and ICIM

So just briefly, eSIM allows some great flexibility in choosing connectivity providers

and its probing technology. Meanwhile, iSIM takes that concept a little further and

integrates connectivity functions directly into central processors, allowing for design

flexibility and reducing power consumption. This session is gonna dive into the

applications most suited for these next generation Sims and explore where SIM

technology is headed next. We're also going to get a bit of a deep dive into

exactly how this works and what this means and the significance for devices. As I

mentioned, it's a panel discussion. I'm going to be joined by Yetin Power, who is

head of products and portfolio management with Vodafone IoT and Alan Tate, who is

CTO with Pellion and Jose Sanchez, who is Senior Director of Product Management and

IoT Connectivity with Telete Centurion. The format is,

each panelist has a couple of intro slides, very quick introduction, then we're on

to the discussion. So please do submit questions, and we will include those in the

discussion if we can after the initial presentations. So with that said, please take

it away, Jatin.

- Thank you, Jim, and good afternoon, good morning, wherever you might be.

My name is Jatin Power and I'll walk you through a couple of slides on Vodafone

IoT and our perspective on eSIM and iSIM.

So as far as Vodafone IoT is concerned, we have been in IoT now for a really long

time. In fact, for the last 11 years, we've been rated as one of the top IoT

providers across the globe. And that's been a consecutive achievement that we've

managed to have over this period of time.

Our IoT connectivity today is available across nearly 800 networks,

nearly 180 countries, which obviously means that no matter where our customers are or

where our customers need IoT connectivity, it's very likely that they will be able

to get that access pretty much across the world. In terms of what we've achieved as

connections on devices, we today connect more than 200 million devices.

So that does make us one of the largest as far as IoT across the world is

concerned, and in fact, even zooming in on,

for example, the low power wide area networks. Even there, we have more than 100

plus networks where we offer LBWA. And of course, we're doing a bit for the

environment as well. Thanks to IoT and the connectivity we provide to our customers,

our customers and we have been able to save nearly 18 million tons of carbon

dioxide emissions. Nearly half of that was just in the last one or two years and

just for context or perspective, many smaller European countries,

that's the kind of annual carbon emission they have. So you can see that it not

just is improving lives, but also making an impact to the environment. So that's

Vodafone IoT as a whole. As you can see, we operate at scale and scalability and

reliability is one of our mainstays and our promise that we can connect anything

anywhere, anytime.

Now, coming to today's topic in particular, which is eSIM and iSIM and I've just

listed a few points here for reference and we will in short talk more about this

as we get into today's session. Now we do see that eSIM has been around for 10

plus years and we have we've been offering eSIM and many of our customers have that

experience right from the beginning. So, eSIM is not a new technology for us, of

course, standards are now evolving, so it is making things different for many

customers who are wanting to take up eSIM. But we have seen already in the past 10

years that the automotive industry, utilities, energy companies,

and a lot of the manufacturing companies have adopted eSIM for for a long time,

and of course I expect will be the first to also transition into the new standards

on eSIM that are coming up. In terms of what are the benefits of eSIM versus the

traditional plastic sims that many of us are familiar with or have been familiar

with in consumer devices, and of course that's also changed, is of course it reduces

complexity when it comes to manufacturing the device where the sim is to be hosted

when that sim is embedded as part of the device and it obviously makes.

It reduces the need for components and it's a simpler, can be a simpler design, so

production is easier.

It obviously then reduces cost when it comes to production for customers who would

otherwise be stocking sims and having to manage the logistics of sending sims here

and there across there. There are different devices when the moment you have eSIM or

iSIM then it's you don't need to have those physical sims in. So it reduces a lot

of complexity for management for logistics and of course reduces cost as well for

customers who then use eSIM. Again because it's an embedded SIM it saves a lot of

time so for customers who want to activate or who want to even switch networks

switch connectivity providers they don't need to then have to worry about swapping

SIMs as we would have with physical SIMs and they can just with some over -the -air

commands and over the internet or over HTTPS etc whatever protocols might be used

it's possible then to just switch quite seamlessly the connectivity provider.

So again, a lot of simplification for customers who would then be using eSIM and

iSIM. Even so, you know, in terms of if there's a need to switch network providers

in our country, for example, for coverage reasons or cost reasons, again,

it's quite easily possible to switch again without having to switch physical sims.

We've also seen that many countries in the world where there are certain restrictions

on permanent roaming especially with IoT where often devices will stay in a country

for more than a certain period of time and therefore they cannot be roaming

permanently as it's called. Then it's necessary to have a local connectivity there

and with eSIM again, you don't have to physically swap sims. All you need to do is

simply download a new profile of that local country,

a type of the local country, for example. And it's possible to still continue and

still be compliant. So again, it's a big differentiator for using an eSIM versus

using a So

technology officer, one of the directors here at Pelling. We're an IoT connectivity

customer.

You know, we work with a wide range of customers, vendors, suppliers, we take supply

from them, we sell it to a large number of our customers as well. Not quite as

big as $200 million, but we've got about 1 .8 billion connections a day, servicing

for 2 ,000 customers direct in the IoT space. We run across 600 networks worldwide,

and over 160 countries worldwide for providing service. We run across a wide range

of industries. So we know we're supplying, but heavily it is like social care,

we've got a number of working utilities, infrastructure, and the energy sector. We

work with some people who do large -scale tracking and logistics,

All the way through to, you know, if you've got a high charger on your wall at

home, that's probably something that we're supplying into, or if you're on some

transport services in the UK, we're doing some of the very high capacity Wi -Fi off

-road. So everything from a smart meter, sitting on your wall, sending 10 kilobytes

of data per month, all the way up to something which is doing 60, 70 terabytes

sending across. Primary set of customers in the UK, Europe, and North America, as

I've said, we do supply well wide. So we've been in a wide range of IRT -based

solutions and they're very excited for kind of that e -seminizing based future.

So how do we develop connectivity? So we work for a lot of our partners and we're

able to provide you connectivity across a range of partner networks across the world.

So both on one of them by AT &T in North America, PT here, Teletubbies out in

Europe, rolling solutions across the board. We can do that through embedded systems.

We're beginning to work with some of the people who are actually doing ISIM

integration and the previous life I used to work as part of ARM and as part of

their ISIM division helping bring connectivity and drive down into the chip level

layer. So we provide that connectivity layer. We've also designed and built all our

platform management and integrated services. So you can come to us and take service

across a wide range of operator partners across one interface, one data layer, and

we've been at this for a large amount of time. Our team here has incredibly high

expertise in IoT. We've seen a lot of these different solutions all the way through

from old -style Scala devices connecting for CSD through to the 2G industrial -style

networks and applied that for our industry as well, into all the rooms today with

MBIT, CATM, 5G, and alternative technologies coming through. That's me.

Okay. Thank you very much, Alan. And next up, Jose Sanchez of Telix and Teori

Intel. Jose.

Thank you, Jim, and thanks, everybody, for joining and to organize in this event.

Yeah, my name is Jose Sanchez and I'm head in product management for connectivity in

TELT Centaurion. And chances are, if you know, or if you've built an IoT device

that you've come across TELT Centaurion, TELT Centaurion is a company that been there

for more than 25 years already. We have delivered millions of hardware IOT modules,

but also millions of connectivity, IOT Connectivity CEMS. So we are one of the top

IOT MBA knows on top of being a leader in the IOT module space.

And on top of that, our portfolio includes also software and custom solutions.

So software for industrial automation, so industrial IoT platforms and services,

but also custom solutions, and for any kind of customer wishing to deploy quickly an

IoT application. So, tell its interior in itself, we see ourselves as an end -to -end

solutions enabler. So, as such, we cover not only connectivity,

but also connectivity enablement. And this is, in fact, what we're talking about

today with eSim and iSim, right? Connectivity enablement. And what are the benefits

we believe that eSim and iSim bring to the IoT markets and IoT applications as a

whole? To put it simple, we believe that eSim brings and delivers value throughout

the whole application lifetime. So starting from the manufacturing, the ability to

build a device with a single global skew and to simplify logistics and manufacturing,

to simplify installation processes for IoT devices. Throughout the lifetime of the

application, the ability to provide seamless global connectivity in places where there

might be restrictions and in a changing world as we are in,

right? You need to be responsive. So you need to have a device and also a SIM

that is able to adapt to changing market conditions. And last but not least,

the ability to provide bulletproof connectivity, which means E -SIM and I -SIM,

especially some features brought in by the new ECM IoT specification enable IoT

applications to be more resilient when it comes to reacting to outages.

And this is something that we believe that's going to be also a key use case for

ECM moving forward. And so as a module bender and a connectivity and IoT,

MB &O and connectivity service provider. We have a rather, I would say,

unique BU of the market and this is summarized a little bit also in the next

slide. So how do we believe that cellular modules will evolve from what has been

traditionally a situation where a module and a SIM card have been sourced

independently to a situation where a module and SIM are sourced in a single part

number and used in a variety of applications and use cases. So we think that the

traditional model where module and SIM are delivered standalone will evolve into a

model where the SIM is integrated in module, which is happening already today, to a

module where there is an eSIM inside the module, eventually also in an ISIM form

factor, with RSP capabilities. That means that the module will be delivered to OEMs

and service providers, and that would be upgradable either in a factory,

via in -factory provisioning or over the air, via a global bootstrap, and then

managed over lifecycle and you know following one of the use cases that we mentioned

before and that's how we see that the you know the future of the cellular module

and the eSIM and ICIM converge.

Right so thanks a lot.

Excellent thank you thank you each for your introductory comments. So now we're

moving on to the discussion phase of this panel. Again, remind us to everybody

listening in, thanks for joining us. If you have questions, please do submit them

and I will put them to these guys, if I can, if I can fit them in. Firstly

though, I wonder if it might be worth doing a bit of a technical baselining and

just spinning back a bit 'cause we've talked about ECM and ICM and so on and so

forth. And I'm wondering, Alan, as a CTO, you seem like an ideal chap to tell us

again, what's an introductory explanation of exactly what eSim and isim are?

I think you're on mute, Alan.

That was a classic. Absolutely.

So, yeah, Yeah, eSIM is one of those interesting terms. It can mean a number of

different things, but in our context, what we're really talking about is embedded

SIMs. So you can embed a SIM and you can integrate a SIM. Now,

embedded SIMs are typically sold on their inside device. eSIM can also refer to an

electronically profiled SIM of which you can download onto an embedded SIM or a

standard SIM if you choose to. Now, most people will be aware of eSIMs in the

context of demoing a profile onto them, but in this context, embedded SIM is a

device. From a form factor, it's what's actually soldered onto the hardware inside

the device. Now, eSIM is taking that a step further. It's looking to get rid of

the SIM entirely and move that actually onto the PCB. So you can have one fully

integrated chip which has your computer, it everything that you need and it has a

cellular capability built straight into there. That identity module can then be used

for other applications if you choose to as well, but primarily that becomes your

connected element built into your device. So when we were working on this RIP world,

the goal was to basically sell a connected chip which had everything required for

connectivity fully built into the PCB that can be shipped as a single and SOC.

- Excellent, Excellent, thank you for that. And actually what I'd like to know is

just take it to take the next step. I'll stick with you. And then I'll ask Jose

Yeti, your inputs. The advantages of ECM and ICM,

you touched on some there, but what are the advantages, both for connectivity vendors

and for end users? Yeah, I

It's simple, you know, you get, you get connectivity and it's built and it's

designed, you're in with the hardware, it works, you know, the chance of having to

replace that SIM card, you know, it's very much in the basics of the device. Now,

that's why eSIM and iSIM go very hand in hand with EYCC because you want to build

a personalised device potentially once it leaves the factory. You don't want to have

to be locked for one underlying connectivity provider. What it means to both

manufacturing and the end -user is actually you can build connectivity very narrowly

But then you can only you only need to build one product line So you have that

connectivity built in there It's there as servicing needs of it It can be a bit

strap connectivity and then it can be personalized for a region or a country is

deploying to So it means that you know not to pick up a phone But if you have a

valid experience with Vodafone You're able to swap out to another provider, another

use case. And that's the sort of more modern technology that's coming with the Sims

or building it. So in years gone by, you had to do vendor choice very early if

you wanted to do a eSIM or an iSIM. Today, with the technologies moved on around

these capabilities, building a SIM at a point of manufacture isn't a vendor walk -in

like it used to be. It's now something you can add an additional capability around

that you want to have a connected element and then the end user can make the

choice as to what they want that device to be as it comes out of the factory.

Okay, thank you. Yeti and Jose, do you have anything to add to that summary of the

advantages?

Yeah, I think Alan's made a few good points. It certainly gives flexibility to

customers when you have something like anything as I mentioned even earlier, the

sheer daunting task of having to swap out SIMs and switch MNOs is obviously then

much, much simpler. I think for the industry as such, it creates no competition,

which is always good for the customer because there's always that challenge that if

a customer is not happy with their service, it makes it easier for them as compared

to in the past to be able to switch, for example. There are of course savings in

terms of costs, you know, because you don't have physical sims and it's all part of

the hardware, so it's quite easy to then save some costs there.

Our requirements are also reduced because then you don't have these separate

components, so And when that happens, it opens up a massive market for what we

refer to as constrained devices which are operating on batteries and need to survive

for many, many years. And again, it's a great benefit for devices like that if the

power consumption is reduced. Also, I think one of the things we are seeing, and

it's my personal favorite, is where it's opening up new form factors of how IoT

applications can be developed because of ECIM and ICIM. And it's amazing the kind of

things we see our customers doing just with that flexibility. OK,

thank you. Was there any initial thoughts on the benefit to the advantage of this

approach? Yeah, I mean, my colleagues already mentioned quite a few. I would say to

add to that, the new ECIM opens up new possibilities in terms of strategies,

opening up new strategies to manage connectivity for connectivity service providers.

And that will result probably in better reliability for end users.

So in end users, and that ends up being better quality of service and experience

for end customers, what our end customers want is being always connected 24 /7

without disruption and EZim brings in additional possibilities to the mix of

technologies that can be used to achieve reliability that I think are promising.

- Okay, so

and much more flexibility in manufacturing and a more vibrant supply ecosystem and

connectivity supply ecosystem and more competition, obviously, leading to better and

more innovative solutions. So these are all steps in the right direction that are

coming with this new technology. But yet in, well,

I'd like to say your views. Who are the customers who are the first to adopt this?

What are the first use cases that are driving traction in the market with new

technology, I guess. Yeah, for some it's new, for some for some customer types and

customers, they have been using this for a while. And the top two that come to

mind are the is the automotive industry, the car manufacturers.

And, you know, as we know, every car today is is connected, It's got a sim in it

and cars last for a long time in the 10, 20 years and they need to remain

connected. And obviously for a car manufacturer, they hate to be locked in to one

provider. So it's a real, real world use case and a real benefit for them to have

that flexibility and almost treated like an insurance

and so to speak, where they know they have the flexibility of being able to switch.

But more importantly, or equally importantly, for someone like us who works with

pretty much all the top car manufacturers in the world, it also allows us to give

them flexibility when they want to expand their footprint into other countries and we

need to perhaps comply with local regulation or switch to the best networks,

we can do that with the Ease and another I would say industry using Ease and quite

a lot of the utilities because again things smartly does you know and they need

again they need to last for for tens of years and and again you can't you know

they can't keep switching activity or having to go into a basement and imagine

trying to switch SIM cards. So again, it's a massive cost saving and a massive

benefit for them. The third, I would say, from our top three is medical device

manufacturers, because then they need to be connected. And there's a significance of

that having that connectivity for medical device manufacturers, whether it's heart rate

monitor, sleep apnea machine, etc. It needs a regular connectivity and they of course

need that flexibility as well just like the automotives and the utilities need. There

are many more asset tracking etc. But I'm just mentioning the top three that from

my perspective have been the widest adopters of eSIM /iCentricology.

Alan Jose, do you see anything materially that or would you basically you see the

same kind of dynamics in the market?

I'm aligned for sure those are the industries that are driving the adoption of eSEM

at a wider scale but I think moving forward midterm we'll see additional industries

adopting it and not necessarily because they are requiring it, but because that would

be an instrument that connectivity service providers will use to deliver global

coverage, right? And as such, I think it was mentioned, you know,

global tracking asset management, tracking companies or remote monitoring applications

installed in countries which need are single, I mean,

that would like to use a single global skew, but where there are, you know,

restrictions in terms of, you know, regulatory restrictions, permanent roaming, et

cetera, will end up using eSIM even if they are not requesting it explicitly.

And a second industry segment, which is more related to critical applications might

also use E -Zim as a mechanism to improve the reliability of the connection,

think of security, think of health care,

again, certain critical asset monitor applications, et cetera, that will certainly

certainly also benefit from eSIM and multi -profile configurations to achieve better

resilience. What today we know, customers using multiple SEMs in a device,

they might end up using a single SEM, a single eSIM with multiple profiles.

- Alan, thank you for that. Following up on that, Alan, perhaps your thoughts on

what you think the characteristics might be of this kind of next wave of customer

who's going to start really driving e -SIM volumes over the next few years?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is something that we interestingly did when we were

kind of designing this solution. I think we've touched on a couple of elements of

it, is like where that new form factor and new capabilities is really coming in.

One of the areas where we were approaching, we're looking at, still something that I

believe today is, as they will match up to anything that can be connected, will be

connected. So what you're beginning to see is, if you can get connected elements

cheap enough, if you can get the form factors, they can be coexisting with what's

on all the friends on chip. If you can get like an NBRT module or whatever the

five, two months come down, you can build it into anything. And what does that

mean? It's like Additionally, friends, you wouldn't bother to connect with a sort of

warranty -style lifecycle or connection that isn't giving a huge amount of value. You

might start doing. One of the things that we're looking at was whether or not there

would be more embedding NBIT element in white goods. So you could actually get an

understanding of the telemetry of how it's being used in market and also for any

warranty or any reason why it might fail ahead of time. And because The form

factor, the integration, the security, the use cases, meant that the risk of

prettiness this end was no more expensive than the license you want to pay for the

processor. And the enablement technology was easy, cheap, and easy to do. And

ubiquitous meant that you would see a mass proliferation of essentially connected

objects. And it wouldn't be the sort of one you expect, it's not your smart meters,

not your smart lights, it's not that. It would be your fridge, it would be your

oven, it would be your washing machine, and these sort of elements are being able

to send back metrics to understand how they're being used, and that would be kind

of taking that service lifecycle move that exists in a lot of industrial use cases,

but moving that more into the home, because then you've got these large -scale

manufacturers being able to understand how their products are being used in the

market, which they've never been able to understand before. So that was an area that

we can see on being able to shrink the connectivity down to the point where she

picked it as cheap and integrated, meant that you would see mass proliferation of

devices.

Just picking on a slightly different topic. Yes, you mentioned earlier the advent of

these technologies or the widespread adoption of these technologies driving competition.

I guess that you know, business models changing or at least some level of business

model competitions. So how would, how, how are business models changing to accommodate

these new dynamics?

Well, of course, there is, there are cost savings to be had. There are

the way the connectivity is embedded into, into the, at the point of manufacturer,

of manufacturer, obviously makes many of the module manufacturers much more interested

in combining the connectivity and offering it as a kind of a package solution as

well. But then also for me what I'm seeing a lot is how,

and I mentioned this earlier briefly, is how the phone factors are being used.

And for example, smart label, for example, is something that I really am quite

impressed with and the way you just imagine you actually embed connectivity in a

simple thin label that you would put on as a wrapper on some item. And that

actually has connectivity. It can be tracked and you can know if it's got any

motion detected and change in temperature, et cetera, or if any tampering has

happened. We could not do a lot of this earlier because either very bulky or very

expensive or it just wouldn't last that long if it had to travel for four weeks

and months or through various temperatures. So again, this is allowing a lot of new

use cases, new applications. Businesses who could not track and monitor their assets

are now able to do that because of these new models, these new form factors which

then allow more and more industries to take advantage of IoT and the new technology,

especially things like ISIM. Absolutely. Okay, thank you. A similar question to you,

Jose. Have you seen any new innovative, interesting, just different business models

emerging off the back of these kind of technologies?

We have seen, I mean, there are constantly new, you know, constantly new use cases,

new applications emerging. That's nature of the IoT market,

right? It's diverse and it's sometimes hard to grasp. You need to follow, I mean,

innovation pace is amazing.

I think that what we see are new ways of using the technology also,

I mean, trying to achieve, For instance, easier installation for devices in a smart

city, for instance, and ensuring that the quality of service is guaranteed and you

don't have to revisit the site, for instance. So implementing easier processes and

also implementing easier processes for end user connectivity selection, think of the

IoT IoT gateways or routers, they are also starting to implement eSIM at scale and

that simplifies grammatically the end user experience. So I see new use cases rather

than, I mean, of course, new applications, but this is the exciting thing I see is

in the existing applications, new use cases, right? Yeah, excellent. So there's one

level of business model innovation in the vendor community providing connectivity, but

there's a whole new level of innovation that that enables for end users and the

companies using these services, which is interesting. But as I understand it,

I'm gonna ask you this question again, Jose. As I understand it,

there are some more concepts and more enhancements to eSIM and iSIM that are coming

along as well. There's a lot of talk at the moment about SGP32, and also approaches

to personalisation, I think, two -step personalisation. Could you outline what some of

these emerging processes or concepts or enhancements are that are emerging at this

point?

Yeah, I believe, I mean, we're moving from eSIM to iSIM, there is a fundamental

change in the logistics, right? The logistics change needs to be adapted.

And that's why the GSMAY defined what we call two -step personalization-- the ability

to enable a new security or model to ensure that the SOC vendor,

the chipset manufacturer, can collaborate with the CIMO SIMOS vendor, the device

maker, the connectivity service provider, the SIMOS vendor in a trusted way. So that

when you produce an IoT module that has an ISIM inside and is programmable over the

wire, over the air, however, that is using eSIM technology, it can be done securely

at the device maker or OEM factory. And so that's gonna be a big transformation and

it's important because it's only scalable with a secure process and with trust

between all the players. And otherwise we have the risk of not enabling isim

properly and not making it scalable enough. So in that sense,

we are with the two -step personalization, enabling device makers and OEM to

personalize IoT modules with the connectivity option they choose,

with the connectivity provider option they choose at a very late stage.

So basically in the SIEM insertion process by a digital profile personalisation

process. Okay, thank you for that. And then Alan,

spinning forwards, looking forward a number of years,

where are we ultimately heading with ECM /ICM? How should this market work in the

future?

I mean I think it's a very interesting question to be fair. I kind of see a lot

of the sort of, we've kind of seen the proto of this already where you look at a

lot of the consumer mobile market where they're shipping to their review ICC enabled

sends in them and what tends to happen is that you pick up and you either get to

choose your connectivity provider or you register it with them. I think there's

definitely a shift of breaking that kind of vendor lock in a point of manufacture

for Sims and moving it much more to a kind of post deployment personalization model.

You know, there comes a lot of interesting use cases which come around from how you

do kind of shelf pick up an IoT device and say, I want to use this connectivity

provider. There's definitely where SGP2 is evolving, what evolving what was the

previous M2M standard and aligning it more of the consumer side so that that

personalization to a provider is a much easier step. I think we will come to expect

that a lot of devices are just connected by default and it will come down to if

you want to enrich that kind of experience, you can put your own connectivity

provision in it. Again, this is a model that kind of comes pretty heavily connected

car. So if you think today, if you're driving your car, if I have an SOS function,

it might have a telemetry -based function, but then you can pay for a data pack to

go on top of that, to use for more fine -grained services. I can see a world where

your IoT device or your connected appliance has a sort of basic telemetry package,

but you can then download a wider set of updates that you want to use for

yourself. So I think that decoupling of device spanderole care and connectivity,

whilst also still providing back the kind of metrics and key use cases to something

that we're going to see more and more of going forward. Okay, thank you. And

actually, there's quite a quite interesting question. A very, a question of immense

scope, in fact, potentially, in terms of addressing the providing answer. But from

Martin, who has said, "Where Where does eSIM orchestration come into eSIM and iSIM

solutions?

Who wants to take that?

I'm happy to jump in.

Essentially, that's just kind of what I was just talking about, is the eSIM

orchestration is the orchestration of EOSC profiles onto a compatible SIM card. Now,

that can be a standard old cell format, which would be your kind of sims that you

just put in a device, all the way through to embedded sims, which are also known

as eSims, and iSims that come in. Now, there is a question where that sits in the

market. So, today you have a lot of dedicated orchestration providers. Now, they will

either be working in SGP22 or 31 or 02, which is the oldest style of doing it.

SGP32 turns that provision slightly on its head and makes it so that almost anyone

can download the profile from the particular vendor onto the device. So people say

that's going to change the market more in favour of MVROs or connectivity service

providers away from the MVROs because they'll then just be treated as either the

first touch or the download partner. But effectively, these are easy orchestration

where it comes to embedded in ISIM is very much the orchestration provider of which

the Sims originally registered against to download a new connectivity profile to that

device. Now, typically an ISIM or an ISIM has to be provisioned with some method of

connecting to a network, be it the internet or whichever. From that, an ISIM

orchestration platform can then download an additional connectivity provision across

that. And when we talk about SGP32 or SGP32 or whichever, we're talking about the

technology in which that profile is downloaded onto the sim.

Okay, thank you very much. It sounds like, I mean, I know it's an incredibly

complicated topic. It's one that's much discussed at the moment in the market. Yet

in what I'd like to do is ask you about some of the other things that need to be

done to make eSIM and iSIM mainstreaming.

I think if I look at let's say the top three to five factors that are needed to

make this successful considering we expect most customers now to look towards the new

stimulus. I think the first one is interoperability as with cellular and as with how

it's been. It's really important that all the plays in the ecosystem, whether it's

the M &Os, it's the the SIM providers, modular manufacturers,

et cetera, the same OS supplies, we need to make sure that this technology is

interoperable so that from a customer perspective, they have complete peace of mind

that they can switch an EIM from one to another, they can switch SIM supplies, they

can switch network providers, it should still work. And that's why, and that brings

to my second point actually, which is that it needs to be standards -based. The

standards have been in writing for a while. We as Vodafone actually are one of the

part of the working group with the GSMA that defines these standards and they are

nearly ready to be now published for commercial use. So again,

you know, following those standards so that everyone has that same say across the

ecosystem is important. Then I think we also need to be aware that the old

standards SCB02 and SCB32 will coexist. For many of our customers who have been

plundered millions with the existing technology, we should be very clear that that's

not something you want to get wiped out. So we in the industry need to support

that for many, many years to come, while at the same time encouraging and supporting

the build out on the new standards as well. So finding a way to coexist, finding a

way to make sure our customers can manage both standards is also going to be

crucial.

Then it comes to the expertise. Alan, Jose and many of their colleagues and other

organizations need to provide their expertise to especially the early adopters to help

and to understand, to help them to scale which are the devices that we work with

the new standards, all of this will take time to build and for us to reach

critical mass. So again, being able to support those early customers, I think is

important. And finally, all of this comes obviously with a layer of security.

So we also need to make sure that our customers are also assured that even and new

standards and new technology that is offered is secure, if not more secure, as

compared to existing standards and existing implementations. - Okay, thank you. I mean,

I agree, yes, and it's going to be very impactful. Now, we are unfortunately very

much approaching the end of our session, 'cause we have another presentation to

introduce, but just to be done for the end of the hour, so we're down to our last

couple of minutes. So, Alan, I I wonder if I can ask you, just within one minute,

maximum each, provide your thoughts on the impact in commercial dynamics of eSIM and

iSIM. So commercial dynamics are in the vendor connectivity provider community.

Jose, do you want to go first? Yes, sure. I would say the impact,

we are already seeing that today.

There's going to be, I think, so both from the connectivity service provider,

IOT module vendors,

CMOs vendors, chipset vendors, they all need to get on board and,

you know, like I mentioned before, you know, get to fully support and embrace the

standard. If that happens, then we can see, I mean, at least I can see just

positive news for the IoT market and cellular IoT space as a whole.

I can see, you know, simplified, like we said, logistic simplified user experience or

improved user experience and improved quality of service and new applications coming

up. So I think the market dynamics will be just benefit will just benefit from from

ECN -ISEM as long as it is a simplification and it doesn't make things more complex,

right? This is the key, right? If this becomes easier because we're adopting eSIM,

then the market dynamics will actually be in favour of it,

I mean, the eSIM will help market, cellular IoT market grow.

Otherwise, it can be a risk because we are just adding complexity without value.

Okay, thank you. And Alan, just finally, a few very quick thoughts from you on how

it's going to impact commercial dynamics? I think it would just be cost connectivity,

longer term, because inherently it allows you to switch. The technology is now

allowing more customer, more vendor choice than it has been previously. So I can see

both increasing skill and demand for devices and our ability to service that,

but at the same time potentially making certain types of connectivity more ubiquitous

and more available to mass market. Okay, thank you very much.

Chaps, we're out of time and we could talk about this for a long time without

question. But at this point, I'd like to thank you, Yatine, Alan, Jose, for

providing some very insightful thoughts on these, thoughts on eSIM and I'd like to

thank everybody out there for joining us but don't go away because we do have

another small spotlight presentation just before the end of the hour and I would

like to introduce Vanessa Zilinga who is Cluster Lead for Managed Connectivity IOT at

A1 Digital and she's going to talk to us about no SIM, no limits, building the

next -gen IoT stack with embedded eSIMs. Vanessa?

Thanks for introducing me. This is such a long title, right?

Yeah, my name is Vanessa Seilinger, and I'm working for A1 Digital, which is part

of the A1 group. We are in this game as an MNO,

so we are acting in the value chain of IoT as an operator. So let's shortly see

what we're talking about today. Many things were already mentioned and discussed in

the panel before. I just want to give a brief overview about the evolution of SIM

provisioning and how the role of the OEMs and the MVNOs and MNOs is changing within

the whole digital value chain and which use cases and which challenges as well we

see approaching with the new standards coming up. So 10 minutes is short so let's

jump directly into the topics. First of all I want to give a short overview about

the standards which we are talking later on. Many of them were already mentioned but

just a short explanation so that we can find and we are all taking it from the

same line. The old standard, the M2M standard is like a very, very basic standard

for the eSIM provisioning. This was used especially for long -time use cases like

thinking of smart meter. And this was to provide a vendor login in theory.

You have had already your EURICC SIM cards with a profile on it. And There was a

subscription manager somewhere where every operator needs to connect to if you want

to just change your profile. This is technically a very high effort and to be very

honest, I do not know too many use cases or too many cases where this really

happened. After that, the consumer standard approached and this is taking up very,

very quick and was also sometimes used for the IoT cases,

but there were some circumstances that just don't make this feasible for IoT.

And now it seems like everyone on the market and also our customers are frequently

asking, ah, within you IoT, some standard HGP32, everything gets easier and this is

the big, this seems to be the big hope of everyone.

The new use cases will approach and that on the world of IoT will get even more

connected and easier connected within the new standard. But why is this so? Why is

this, why is this become on the market or how do we see it? I think the biggest

point of it is the easier provisioning. We will have this in the next slide there.

I'm going to show you shortly the architect texture of the different standards but

this is something I really want to mention here so the provisioning is what becomes

way easier with the new standard also for the IoT. Talking about the consumer

standard before, just think of using this for IoT. This was mostly impossible because

often you just have headless IoT devices so there is no point in having something

like a pool mechanism. If you do not have the device to enter QR codes,

can a QR code or enter a link. This was one of the restricts, which we saw when

we took the consumer approach for IoT.

This will change within the architecture of the SGP32. And this will help a lot.

But why is it or what does it make it? Why do we really want to always change

our profiles? Or why does IoT constantly want to change profile? I think if you're

okay and if you're satisfied with your operator, this is not the case. But just

think of certain use cases where this really makes sense. For example, if you want

to deploy some various solutions where you do have the legal restrictions, then it

totally makes sense that you just have a little contract maybe with a local operator

and you can just download that local profile and still offer your solution to the

customer. For example, if you're in the role of the OAM.

Other parts, what we should look at and where we see high potential of the new

standard is for example, the higher scalability of solutions. So in the beginning,

when IoT or EUICC was used, you always had to decide upfront before you go into

logistics or into production even, where you wanna launch this solution, this device,

because you need to decide which EUICC or which SIM card with which operator you're

gonna put in so that this will then work in the each and every region wherever

you're going to ship your solution. This is something where you can now streamline

your production as an example because you can just put in one eSIM.

This does not even have to be connected to an operator or maybe you do have

already a boot surf profile on it and then whenever you decide where this solution

will go, you decide with which operator you want to go. So this makes the new

standard also very cost effective. So it can help save costs.

For example, already in the production. We are now going from this push mentality to

the pull mentality. And this is what we're going to have a closer look here in

this slide. So you see already in the red boxes. So this is the part where the

operator was involved in the very on the very left hand side. It's a big box where

you also have the SMDP, SMR included when it comes to an eSIM solution.

So you needed to have a very, very high integration of the operator of your choice

in your solution. Looking at the consumer approach it already seems to be a little

smaller and also the SIM card part is already something that can be chosen by the

OEM or whoever is deciding the solution and now with the new standard looking at

the IOT SGP32 standard you see that there is only a little box on the right hand

side and this is the SMDP plus which is still owned by the operator, but you can

involve in your solution as many operators as you want, because you have the little

EIM sitting here, and this is the heart of your connectivity solution right now.

So this is in the new standard, you're more or less to say remote control. This is

the most important part, which you will address. And looking at the IoT value chain,

This is what we see as a big game changer because in the past you had your

hardware producer or you were the hardware producer, maybe then there was the part

of the connectivity where it was clear you also purchase the sim cards maybe from

the connectivity provider. And if there were any other services like IOT platform or

cloud offering this you could decide if you're going to do it by your own. Or if

you also take it from your right or someone else. And now there is this little

bubble in the middle between hardware and connectivity popping up, saying the same

offering in this slide. And this is where you as an OEM or as a solution designer

can decide how much you want to be involved in this part. Because this EIA app,

what we said before, can be the part where you decide which connectivity provider

you're going to take for which deployment for example you can define rules in this

EIM and it's not written it's nowhere written where who should be this EIM provider

so this could be still the operator if you trusted them and if they are offering

the service this can be you if you have the knowledge about it and then you can

just build your own solution here but it can also be that OEMs now directly

approach SimCAD producer and asking for their solution, asking for the SimCADs and

also the EIM. So I think this was mentioned somewhere in the panel discussion before

as well. For sure we need to guarantee the interoperability of all of these parts,

but when we boil it down then it's on you, the one who is designing the devices

or the solutions to decide which part you want to provide by your own and which

part you're going to purchase wherever you want to. And for sure, there will be not

only the OEMs, the MNO, but there will be maybe also a new part of new system

integrator taking this part and launching new solutions on the market that will make

it even harder to decide in which direction to go and whom to trust when it comes

to this. But this is also a big chance because so much of the power of the

operators is distributed between several players now and there is much more of a

cost efficiency on the table right now because you can pick and choose your

connectivity however you like and however you prefer if you do have a better

agreement in the mid -east with this operator you're going to take them for this

deployment and for Europe you take someone completely different but you do not have

to choose an other simple rider just as an example and this already brings me to

my last slide I'm saying like yeah we do have also all challenges ahead.

For sure, there will be restrictions, legal restrictions, but with the new SIM

deployment or with this new SIM standard, there are new ways or there's a new power

to tackle those challenges. And this gives us a very big hope that IoT deployment

will ramp up again within the next year to a higher number as we see it right

now. And there are challenges ahead for sure.

There are questions coming up from especially from our customers, which are very far

already, like how do we ensure profile productivity? The only answer to this is

testing, testing, testing. What happens to legacy devices? Do we have both then out

there? The answer right now is yes. Maybe there will be some platforms, overlay

platforms as well. But for sure, we're going to have to deal with the old

technologies for sure, also for some years still. And if we are asked,

so what is your tip now? What's next? What's coming next? What can we do to be

prepared for this? So I always say, make sure you understand the APIs of the APA

so that you know how the profile assistant is working if you decide as an OEM to

build your own solution, test with as many SIM providers as you can and also test

as many systems as you can to make sure that you find the right way of integration

for your knowledge base. And if you decide to go in this direction and then build

provisioning UX. So for sure, and this is my bet, provisioning UX and an easy

provisioning within the devices will be a product differentiator in the next years.

Excellent. Thank you very much for that, Vanessa. That was very interesting and very

clear and very - Wonderful, thank you. Unfortunately, we are out of time for this

combined session. So what I will have to do at this point is thank everybody for

joining us, for listening in to the panel discussion and also to Vanessa. And I

should highlight that the next session, there is a session which was started just a

couple of minutes ago, focusing on security by design or by default, breach defense

as an embedded concept. So that session should be starting, it should start just a

couple of minutes ago, you'll probably tune in just in time to hear Keith induce

it. So I encourage you to jump over and tune in there. Thanks again for joining us

everyone.