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joshstrangeHNSource author
Business & incomeExperience excerpt · English

I bought a bunch of cellular iPads off Amazon (“renewed”, aka refurbished) for my business

… I bought a bunch of cellular iPads off Amazon (“renewed”, aka refurbished) for my business. I tried out a few IoT cellular providers and the first one used regular SIM cards and they worked just fine. The second carrier (that I ultimately went with) used eSIM and while most my iPads joined up without issue I had 7 of them refuse to add the eSIM. While carriers aren’t allowed to lock iPads SIM they _are_ allowed to lock them to only work with their eSIM. AT&T was the culprit here and you can find multiple mentions of this practice on their forums which appeared to be the only way to get help on this issue. Post a new topic, wait for customer support to come along and PM you, then ask for your iPads to be unlocked (EUICC). AT&T Forum support ultimately told me “those iPads aren’t in our system, there is no lock on them”. I tried calling in (BTW, they won’t even talk to you unless you are a customer of theirs which, thankfully?, I was for my personal line) and spent hours on the phone with them only to be told the same thing. …

Original discussionAndroid now lets you transfer eSIMs between your phones173 source comments · at import
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denkmoonHN

Can anyone actually cite a case of anti-lockin regulations being subverted because someone was using an esim instead of a physical sim? Not saying it doesn't happen but I'd be pretty surprised if a court suddenly said lockin is ok because they added an "e" to the SIM.

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CrendKingHN

Are you saying if you use physical SIM from AT&T on those iPads, the problem would suddenly go away? I thought regardless which kind of SIM you use, when a device joins the carrier's network, they have to identify itself with EID (or something equivalent). If AT&T has a block on that ID, why would the kind of SIM matter? If there is a specific law forbidding carriers to put any kind of block on a device using only physical SIM, but not if eSIM, I'll be interested to know that law. And if that's the case, wouldn't it be obvious that because eSIM is a relatively new thing, the law is just lagging behind, not that eSIM inherently a bad thing?

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turquoisevarHN

Ah good old AT&T with the sleazy shit Technically it’s not a SIM lock (also called carrier lock) in the traditional sense, AT&T calls it the carrier visibility or carrier reveal program. It’s a BS name because it doesn’t just hide other carriers from the carrier select screen, it also actively prevents eSIM activation via QR code etc. And if you need help from AT&T CS 9/10 have never heard of this term. For all intents and purposes it’s basically just an eSIM specific SIM lock. But you (and anyone reading this that runs into the same issue) can use the “carrier visibility/reveal” terminology to get the issue resolved faster in the future.

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denkmoonHN

Sounds like the system worked as intended, you reached out to the telco regulator and the issue was resolved in 3 days. Also sounds like it isn't specifically an esim problem, but an AT&T being a shit company that tries to get away with illegal things problem and in this instance that involved an esim. I'm more asking about cases where using an esim means the existing regulations don't apply, not instances of some shit company disobeying regulation until the regulator gets involved.

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