You got a sim and you put it in any phone you wanted. Now every time you switch a phone, you have to contact your carrier and possibly even get charged for the change.

If you travel a lot, you just buy a prepaid sim card in whatever country you're in, and put it in a phone, then leave the country, take the sim out and use another sim in that country. Some new phones (notably the new iphone, us version) don't even have a sim card slot anymore.

> Now every time you switch a phone, you have to contact your carrier and possibly even get charged for the change.

This depends on the carrier.

I use US Mobile. In their app, there's a very simple button on each line's screen to transfer the eSim to another phone. I converted my physical sim to eSim on my iPhone XS before the iPhone 14 came out a couple weeks back. When I got my iPhone 14 I was able to transfer the sim to my new phone in about 30 seconds.

The ONLY gotcha here is you do need internet access to make this work, so that is one thing to keep in mind. But it's super easy to do and I really don't see a majority of the complaints around how easy it is being legitimate. I suspect many of you haven't actually used eSims before.

Can you transfer the eSIM if the source device is broken?

Presumably that would require calling your provider to do. But depending on how your source device was broken, even with a physical sim that might be required.

I mean a big benefit of a physical sim card is you can quickly swap it out of a broken device...

Or you just use a carrier that allows re-scanning eSIM activation codes. Then the only problem is your device physically breaking, which actually "traps" the eSIM profile.

So you depend on the company's goodwill. Has this ever worked when it comes to monopolized industries?

As others have mentioned, companies can (and some but not all do!) tie physical SIMs to a given IMEI just as well, so it‘s less a question of goodwill and more one of competition, consumer education and choice etc.

I think this (tieing phones to sims and vice versa) is forbidden in EU.

It's less about what's technically forbidden and more about what's actually enforced.

If the carrier forces you to spend an hour on hold to talk to a customer support agent to reissue an eSIM provisioning code, would that be considered tying? Probably not, yet it's still very effective at discouraging people from switching phones.