Each year these days, I spend about a month overseas on business. With every trip I rack up frequent-flier miles, and before every trip I have an internal debate over whether I should buy a local phone, pay Verizon enormous fees, or perform phone surgery to transplant SIM cards. I hate these choices. I just want a phone I can switch from carrier to carrier and country to country without swearing. Now, thanks to a newly standardized technology called , I may be able to change carriers, both domestic and international, in seconds. ESIM gives you the potential to switch carriers if they support the eSIM standard. Indeed, some people are afraid that eSIMs will just be another way to lock you in. Or for not so good. Few people change carriers even once. Everyone I know who has permanently switched carriers has done it by buying a new phone, not by switching the SIM. The only folks I know who switch carriers often are the ones like me who do a lot of international travel. In fact, the two factors that drove my decision to buy the Pixel 2 were the prospect of regular Android updates and the eSIM. At 6mm in length and 5mm in width, eSIM is the smallest SIM ever made. In fact, it includes new standard features: and Remote Provisioning capabilities. In addition, vendors and developers can use it to. M2M also provides Remote Provisioning abilities, which is what I care about. You can invoke Remote Provisioning in multiple ways. For example, you can switch carriers by scanning a QR code. I love that idea. So far, only Google, with the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, have the eSIM within a smartphone. Apple has incorporated it in its. When vendors are obsessed with making devices ever lighter and cheaper, that matters. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. For now, with the Pixel 2 family, your only carrier choices are Verizon and. If it works out that way, international business travel will get a lot easier for smartphone warriors.
