Haha what a coincidence, I bought a 9eSIM adapter a few weeks ago! There is a new eSIM-only card in Germany where you get 3 GB of data plus unlimited SMS and calls per month for free. To order it I had to use Frida and the Android emulator to fool the app into thinking the device had an eSIM. After that you have to do some JavaScript shenanigans on the website to get the QR code. But after that, everything works flawlessly with the eSIM adapter. The card is called "GMX FreePhone".
3GB of Data + Unlimited SMS and Calls for free sounds very nice? Can you share the name of the provider so that we can add it to our eSIM comparison for Germany https://www.monito.com/en/esim-plans-compared
What's the reason for these lower prices? Data only 5gb/month for $5 or $6 seems to be the summary of the link, amazing! I think the answer is there is lots of competition and they've driven the price down to this point. That's an incredible price.
Of course this would be immensely useful. For example, can I put this in my vehicle with built in maps (or just have a hotspot in my vehicle to use with a tablet). As a price comparison, in the us there are some EVs that charge $100/year for basically this, most charge a lot more. That's $8.33/month, so only a bit more than $6 or 7. But in the us it's hard or impossible get anything that low for just raw service, I can't find anything like that.
What’s your use case for the adapter. To use the free service on a non eSIM capable phone? Or for some other stuff? Thanks for the info about the provider. Didn’t hear about the offering yet.
>To use the free service on a non eSIM capable phone?
Yes. I paid 5 €/month for LIDL Connect for 1 GB. I don't need much mobile data and in just a few months the cost of the adapter is amortized. It might also come handy in the future if I travel abroad.
That would be mine, yeah. Set up an old phone with one of those esims from a company that offers small amounts of data for free for watching an ad, then drop it in my glove box as a backup in case something happens to my real phone.
Depending on what 4G/LTE modem/chip your laptop it is using (it must be based on a Qualcomm SoC which 99% are), there are and I can share documents on how you can do the provisioning directly on the Laptop the SIM card is in.
The feature is present in the stock Qualcomm firmware bundle, but vendors like Quectel, Sierra etc may decide if they include the feature or not.
I know this because it is on our dev team To-Do List to implement that for a Linux daemon :)
PhD student here, working on 5G systems. I too would be very interested in this. Email in my profile - and am happy to link you to my academic email once you've reached out if you want to confirm my academic credentials :)
I hope I am not overhyping this. It's just some source code and documentation. And meanwhile I found out that the libqmi team also is already working on an implementation, so none of this may be needed.
To make the source code work in a general fashion with most Qualcomm modems you might have lots of work to do.
Also, as mentioned: It's up to the vendor to decide if they keep the LPA eSIM support in their firmware, or remove it, or disable this in QMI. Sierra Wireless for example for long was known to throw most stuff out because their flash else would not have had enough space for both the PCIe MBIM and USB QMI firmware they needed to implement, so tons of stuff is missing in their QMI.
For some vendors you will need some magic commands to enable some SIM-related features.
So please don't be disappointed if this turns out to be of no use. It's just a fragment that may be able to help solving a puzzle, or maybe not.
I've tried the esim.me and the jmp offerings in the same set of phones.
esim.me was generally quite glitchy and ultimately just stopped working. The requirement of having an esim.me account also just rubbed me the wrong way.
Which one is the best of these? Do they work in every country? I can't tell if the do some internet-connected magic or if they just program the SIM so that it appears like a bog-standard SIM to the phone.
I use an esim.me card in my phone and once you program the card with the esim.me app, it shows up as a normal physical sim card on the phone with whatever plan the esim was for. I believe you can even move it to another device and it will still show up with the same plan, though I haven't tried that.
The only issue I've had with it is that some esim provider apps refuse to work on a phone that doesn't have esim capabilities, and since the phone sees the card as a normal sim card, the apps don't work. I assume that will be an issue for any of these cards. Not a huge issue though, most esim apps/websites will still let you get the QR code or download the profile even if your phone doesn't natively support esim, and you just enter that into the esim.me app to program the card.
I've personally never tried since my phone supports e-sim but people on the internet report good findings with the 5ber card (note that you need the "Ultra" card for iPhone, the other ones are android only).
Buy the airalo esim on my iphone. Download the QR code. Upload it to the mudi router. Activate it there. Voila! I then wireguard back to my home internet in case I need a US on the router. Can also use tailscale, but if my gf wants US internet its helpful.
At least if you’re travelling to Europe there are far cheaper offers with local carriers for about €/£ 5 for 20GB/30days valid across the EU and often UK.
Lycamobile and Simyo usually have good deals though ended up needing to get a physical SIM in Spain as they require showing ID.
I forget if it was with Lyca or a similar brand, but they would deduct 5 cents for each sms before you setup a plan. I was incredibly careful to not do anything and disabled almost everything but apparently iPhone phones home in a way that’s totally hidden from the user and most providers hide and zero the charge but not these rando brands.
Another 5 EUR down to tube because I only had 4,95 for my 5 EUR plan.
Dunno why I put my SIM card in first but I guess I had to for some reason (was on wifi and had access to a computer)
True. This is what I used to do, but every country does this their SIM setup slightly different:
1. Do I need to show a passport yes/no?
2. Who sells the sim? Do I need to sit in a queue to purchase one? How do I top up?
3. Who is the best telco provider in the region I'm in?
4. etc etc
I'd prefer eSIM all day for that reason. Also, yes I can load up as many local/region eSIMs I want in case I need more, but honestly 20GB is plenty for a full year.
They have coupons every so often on holidays for their worldwide esims. I believe they have one going for Chinese New Years that makes 30GB for $80. The data also has a 2 year expiration that rolls over on any global data purchase.
Downside is their esims (mostly? all?) terminate in Singapore, so higher latency outside of the Asia region.
A 4G/5G router creates a "real" WiFi network rather than a personal network.
Hotspotting is great for 1 or 2 devices, but devices are reluctant to connect to a personal hotspot automatically (Apple devices, at least). You have to manually select/tap the hotspot every time, which gets to be a pain when you have multiple devices and you're using it as your daily, primary internet connection.
I might also want to leave the house/hotel room/office for whatever reason with my phone but keep other devices connected. In this case the router can either be fixed in place (and plugged in) or travel with me on battery. Flexibility!
I own a Mudi v1, it is Chinese and 'just runs OpenWrt' (with mods). I had to use such device for a previous job (not w/eSIM tho). Battery life was good, but now not so much, and battery isn't user replaceable.
So would you not even need a plan for your phone and could do all voice/text/data through this device? Just keep it it with you at all times and running 24/7?
This is neat. I’ve only heard about ESTK [0] and sysmoEUICC by sysmocom [1].
ESTK supports a couple neat features, like cloud provisioning of profiles [2] (which makes it possible to add eSIM profiles on iPhone, too, not just Android).
I'm implementing a fully libre open-source vowifi/volte client for Android that runs in JVM sandbox, rather than untrustable modem. During my development I went through a protocol detail that I was too lazy to implement: you're supposed to announce which is the last 4g cell you saw even when doing Vowifi. I just hardcoded a value and forgot about it.
And then, I get a user who tells me that their carrier is saying they are roaming, even though they don't. I'm a tad clueless at first, because they are the network, they ought to know (this even happen over VoLTE). I send them an updated implementation that reports the correct cell. And then they receive a "welcome back" SMS.
Anyway, it's possible that your carrier can do abroad vowifi, you just need your vowifi client to lie as to where it is.
In case it's of interest, please see https://osmocom.org/projects/foss-ims-client/wiki/VoWiFi_wit... for an existing way how to talk to VoWiFi carriers from entirely free/libre/open-source software. It's basically a hacked-up version of Asterisk that has IMS client support, plus a modified strongswan IPsec client.
At least Vodafone Germany intentionally blocks (or used to block) foreign IPs for their gateway. I'll always trust them to needlessly ruin perfectly fine technologies.
Fortunately, as far as I remember at least iPhones route VoWiFi traffic over a VPN, if any is connected, so that's one way to still use it abroad.
As noted by other commenters, some carriers (I think all of the UK carriers) use IP-based geoblocking to ensure that Wi-Fi Calling only works when using an IP address registered in the UK.
I have a dual-SIM Pixel 7, the eSIM "slot" has a data-only subscription, the other slot has a pay-as-you-go SIM that I can make phone calls with (I make so few phone calls to actual lines, that having credit that I can top-up every few months is much more cheaper than paying monthly for free minutes). The PAYG SIM offers WiFi calling, and the phone appears to even offer "WiFi"-calling over the data connection, for a much better audio quality.
> If I have troubles receiving SMSs from Germany to German number while in US, would wifi calling icrease the chances of receiving the said SMSs?
I'm not up to date on the state of messaging infrastructure but it used to be the case that some providers would offer non-standard methods for sending messages over their network to intermediary providers. Rather than sending an SMS to a number, a business would ask the intermediary to send a message and the intermediary would use the non-standard method provided by the network provider. The non-standard methods work fine if you're connected to the network directly but if you're overseas that will not be the case and so you can't receive these non-standard messages. Don't quote me on any of that, though.
The non-standard method is to get the SMS to a delivering SMSC (which is the same network component that's used for mobile originated SMS delivery, which is standardized).
Once it's enqueued in an SMSC, there is no more distinction between how it got there, as far as I understand (at least downstream from there; delivery reports to the sender might again be proprietary for non-mobile senders).
> The non-standard methods work fine if you're connected to the network directly but if you're overseas that will not be the case and so you can't receive these non-standard messages.
This is actually not particular to the way in which SMS have been enqueued, but rather to how they're delivered: The sending SMSC has to "dial" pretty deep into both the recipient's home and visited network in the original implementation. This means that they need a commercial agreement and technical integration with both of them.
Usually, problems/inconsistencies occur when they do know how to deliver to the recipient number's home network (because if they can't, they'd probably have rejected the message at SMSC submission time), but are then redirected to a given visited network with which they don't have interconnectivity.
This problem (and some others, including serious privacy concerns) is solved by a newer technology called "SMS home routing". In that model, there's something like a proxy in the recipient's home network that essentially poses as the receiving phone to the sending SMSC, and then uses the home network's resources to do actual delivery. This usually leads to more consistent experiences, and allows things like a "received message log". (Without a home router, the recipient's home network never sees the message content when the recipient is roaming!)
Many providers actually let you use Wi-Fi calling without any VPN, i.e. they don't arbitrarily restrict the set of allowed IPs that can connect to their Internet gateway.
> If I have troubles receiving SMSs from Germany to German number while in US, would wifi calling icrease the chances of receiving the said SMSs?
Probably not, unless your provider supports inbound and outbound SMS via ISM. If you have an iPhone, you can check whether yours does in Settings -> About -> Tap the name of your carrier. (If it lists "Voice and SMS", you might be good; if it's only "voice" or nothing at all, SMS will go over the visited network.)
Are there even roaming costs at all when calling over wifi? Would make sense to me if there weren't, since you're not using the mobile infrastructure you would be paying for.
Then again I could also easily see telcos charging roaming anyway, just because they can.
Calls can freely be handed over between VoLTE and VoWiFi, depending on signal quality, and that often happens without the user's knowledge or explicit consent.
This means that "no roaming costs over WiFi" is a very dicy proposition, as a carrier either needs to restrict handovers (and I don't even know if that's allowed by the spec, not to mention the implications of dropping calls when going out of WiFi Range), cover the costs themselves, or move them onto the unsuspecting user if a handover happens.
There's also a technical hurdle of the telco can't know where you're coming from over the Internet. The terminate your end of the vowifi call and from there they only charge for the connection as though it originated in their network, which is all they know for sure (that is their SIM and your account that's authenticated from somewhere in the world)
Alternatively, use a global eSIM purely for data access, then use your phone as a SIP client (or use something like Google Voice) for PSTN access, eschewing the mobile network entirely.
i think it meant the rims for the punch outs were the best for keeping a nano sim in the reader stable (which presumably took one of the larger formats).
OpenEUICC needs a rooted phone, while the provider-branded packages like EasyEUICC can run in user space (and thus needs to be signed with the corresponding hash).
-----8<-----
There are two variants of this project:
OpenEUICC: The full-fledged privileged variant.
Due to its privilege requirement, OpenEUICC must be placed inside /system/priv-app and be signed with the platform certificate.
The preferred way to including OpenEUICC in a system image is to build it along with AOSP.
Note: When privileged, OpenEUICC supports any eUICC chip that implements the SGP.22 standard, internal or external. However, there is no guarantee that external (removable) eSIMs actually follow the standard. Please DO NOT submit bug reports for non-functioning removable eSIMs. They are NOT officially supported unless they also support / are supported by EasyEUICC, the unprivileged variant.
EasyEUICC: Unprivileged version that can run as a user app.
This version supports two modes of operation:
Inserted, removable eSIMs: Due to obvious security requirements, EasyEUICC is only able to access eSIM chips whose ARF/ARA contains the hash of EasyEUICC's signing certificate.
USB CCID Card Readers: Only T=0 readers that use the standard USB CCID protocol are supported. In this mode, EasyEUICC can access any eSIM chip loaded in the card reader regardless of their ARF/ARA, as long as they implement the SGP.22 standard.
Prebuilt release-mode EasyEUICC apks can be downloaded here
For removable eSIM chip vendors: to have your chip supported by official builds of EasyEUICC when inserted, include the ARA-M hash 2A2FA878BC7C3354C2CF82935A5945A3EDAE4AFA
Thank you! I came to the comments to find the most open version of this. Unfortunately, the JMP eSIM's order form is broken so I cannot purchase their device (it never asks for city/state and then the order form errors out with "City or state/province not specified")
It seems that bringing up the city/state box after you enter zip code is being slow right now. if you wait a bit do they show up for you after entering zip code?
Readit News
Of course this would be immensely useful. For example, can I put this in my vehicle with built in maps (or just have a hotspot in my vehicle to use with a tablet). As a price comparison, in the us there are some EVs that charge $100/year for basically this, most charge a lot more. That's $8.33/month, so only a bit more than $6 or 7. But in the us it's hard or impossible get anything that low for just raw service, I can't find anything like that.
Deleted Comment
Yes. I paid 5 €/month for LIDL Connect for 1 GB. I don't need much mobile data and in just a few months the cost of the adapter is amortized. It might also come handy in the future if I travel abroad.
The stated reason is because you can call premium services and run up a charges even with a free service.
Dead Comment
Depending on what 4G/LTE modem/chip your laptop it is using (it must be based on a Qualcomm SoC which 99% are), there are and I can share documents on how you can do the provisioning directly on the Laptop the SIM card is in.
The feature is present in the stock Qualcomm firmware bundle, but vendors like Quectel, Sierra etc may decide if they include the feature or not.
I know this because it is on our dev team To-Do List to implement that for a Linux daemon :)
He has :)
> there are and I can share documents on how you can do the provisioning directly on the Laptop the SIM card is in.
Yes, please!
To make the source code work in a general fashion with most Qualcomm modems you might have lots of work to do.
Also, as mentioned: It's up to the vendor to decide if they keep the LPA eSIM support in their firmware, or remove it, or disable this in QMI. Sierra Wireless for example for long was known to throw most stuff out because their flash else would not have had enough space for both the PCIe MBIM and USB QMI firmware they needed to implement, so tons of stuff is missing in their QMI.
For some vendors you will need some magic commands to enable some SIM-related features.
So please don't be disappointed if this turns out to be of no use. It's just a fragment that may be able to help solving a puzzle, or maybe not.
You can reach me via mail to s at username dot eu
TIA
Alternatives:
https://esim.5ber.com/
https://esim.me/
https://jmp.chat/esim-adapter
I've tried the esim.me and the jmp offerings in the same set of phones.
esim.me was generally quite glitchy and ultimately just stopped working. The requirement of having an esim.me account also just rubbed me the wrong way.
jmp has been a seamless experience so far.
I ordered a 5ber yesterday, and waiting for it to arrive.
The only issue I've had with it is that some esim provider apps refuse to work on a phone that doesn't have esim capabilities, and since the phone sees the card as a normal sim card, the apps don't work. I assume that will be an issue for any of these cards. Not a huge issue though, most esim apps/websites will still let you get the QR code or download the profile even if your phone doesn't natively support esim, and you just enter that into the esim.me app to program the card.
Deleted Comment
- GLiNet Mudi v2: https://store.gl-inet.com/products/mudi-v2-portable-4g-lte-r...
- EIOT Physical eSim https://store.gl-inet.com/products/esim-experience-seamless-...
- 20GB Worldwide Airalo for 365 days ($69): https://www.airalo.com/global-esim/discover-365days-20gb
Buy the airalo esim on my iphone. Download the QR code. Upload it to the mudi router. Activate it there. Voila! I then wireguard back to my home internet in case I need a US on the router. Can also use tailscale, but if my gf wants US internet its helpful.
https://docs.gl-inet.com/router/en/4/tutorials/how_to_set_up...
Lycamobile and Simyo usually have good deals though ended up needing to get a physical SIM in Spain as they require showing ID.
Another 5 EUR down to tube because I only had 4,95 for my 5 EUR plan.
Dunno why I put my SIM card in first but I guess I had to for some reason (was on wifi and had access to a computer)
1. Do I need to show a passport yes/no?
2. Who sells the sim? Do I need to sit in a queue to purchase one? How do I top up?
3. Who is the best telco provider in the region I'm in?
4. etc etc
I'd prefer eSIM all day for that reason. Also, yes I can load up as many local/region eSIMs I want in case I need more, but honestly 20GB is plenty for a full year.
They have coupons every so often on holidays for their worldwide esims. I believe they have one going for Chinese New Years that makes 30GB for $80. The data also has a 2 year expiration that rolls over on any global data purchase.
Downside is their esims (mostly? all?) terminate in Singapore, so higher latency outside of the Asia region.
Hotspotting is great for 1 or 2 devices, but devices are reluctant to connect to a personal hotspot automatically (Apple devices, at least). You have to manually select/tap the hotspot every time, which gets to be a pain when you have multiple devices and you're using it as your daily, primary internet connection.
I might also want to leave the house/hotel room/office for whatever reason with my phone but keep other devices connected. In this case the router can either be fixed in place (and plugged in) or travel with me on battery. Flexibility!
Any limitations / bumps in the road, or it "just works"?
https://dl.gl-inet.com/release/router/testing/e750/4.3.21
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
ESTK supports a couple neat features, like cloud provisioning of profiles [2] (which makes it possible to add eSIM profiles on iPhone, too, not just Android).
[0]: https://estk.me/
[1]: https://shop.sysmocom.de/sysmoEUICC1-eUICC-for-consumer-eSIM...
[2]: https://docs.estk.me/manual/download/cloud-enhance/index.htm...
- you bought eSIM in Germany
- you are currently in US
- you use tailscale with exit node at your apartment in Germany
- voila, no roaming when you call German mobile lines
Right?
[EDIT FOR ADDITIONAL QUESTION]
If I have troubles receiving SMSs from Germany to German number while in US, would wifi calling icrease the chances of receiving the said SMSs?
And then, I get a user who tells me that their carrier is saying they are roaming, even though they don't. I'm a tad clueless at first, because they are the network, they ought to know (this even happen over VoLTE). I send them an updated implementation that reports the correct cell. And then they receive a "welcome back" SMS.
Anyway, it's possible that your carrier can do abroad vowifi, you just need your vowifi client to lie as to where it is.
Fortunately, as far as I remember at least iPhones route VoWiFi traffic over a VPN, if any is connected, so that's one way to still use it abroad.
I'm not up to date on the state of messaging infrastructure but it used to be the case that some providers would offer non-standard methods for sending messages over their network to intermediary providers. Rather than sending an SMS to a number, a business would ask the intermediary to send a message and the intermediary would use the non-standard method provided by the network provider. The non-standard methods work fine if you're connected to the network directly but if you're overseas that will not be the case and so you can't receive these non-standard messages. Don't quote me on any of that, though.
Once it's enqueued in an SMSC, there is no more distinction between how it got there, as far as I understand (at least downstream from there; delivery reports to the sender might again be proprietary for non-mobile senders).
> The non-standard methods work fine if you're connected to the network directly but if you're overseas that will not be the case and so you can't receive these non-standard messages.
This is actually not particular to the way in which SMS have been enqueued, but rather to how they're delivered: The sending SMSC has to "dial" pretty deep into both the recipient's home and visited network in the original implementation. This means that they need a commercial agreement and technical integration with both of them.
Usually, problems/inconsistencies occur when they do know how to deliver to the recipient number's home network (because if they can't, they'd probably have rejected the message at SMSC submission time), but are then redirected to a given visited network with which they don't have interconnectivity.
This problem (and some others, including serious privacy concerns) is solved by a newer technology called "SMS home routing". In that model, there's something like a proxy in the recipient's home network that essentially poses as the receiving phone to the sending SMSC, and then uses the home network's resources to do actual delivery. This usually leads to more consistent experiences, and allows things like a "received message log". (Without a home router, the recipient's home network never sees the message content when the recipient is roaming!)
> If I have troubles receiving SMSs from Germany to German number while in US, would wifi calling icrease the chances of receiving the said SMSs?
Probably not, unless your provider supports inbound and outbound SMS via ISM. If you have an iPhone, you can check whether yours does in Settings -> About -> Tap the name of your carrier. (If it lists "Voice and SMS", you might be good; if it's only "voice" or nothing at all, SMS will go over the visited network.)
Then again I could also easily see telcos charging roaming anyway, just because they can.
This means that "no roaming costs over WiFi" is a very dicy proposition, as a carrier either needs to restrict handovers (and I don't even know if that's allowed by the spec, not to mention the implications of dropping calls when going out of WiFi Range), cover the costs themselves, or move them onto the unsuspecting user if a handover happens.
OpenEUICC needs a rooted phone, while the provider-branded packages like EasyEUICC can run in user space (and thus needs to be signed with the corresponding hash).
-----8<-----
There are two variants of this project:
OpenEUICC: The full-fledged privileged variant. Due to its privilege requirement, OpenEUICC must be placed inside /system/priv-app and be signed with the platform certificate.
The preferred way to including OpenEUICC in a system image is to build it along with AOSP.
Note: When privileged, OpenEUICC supports any eUICC chip that implements the SGP.22 standard, internal or external. However, there is no guarantee that external (removable) eSIMs actually follow the standard. Please DO NOT submit bug reports for non-functioning removable eSIMs. They are NOT officially supported unless they also support / are supported by EasyEUICC, the unprivileged variant.
EasyEUICC: Unprivileged version that can run as a user app. This version supports two modes of operation: Inserted, removable eSIMs: Due to obvious security requirements, EasyEUICC is only able to access eSIM chips whose ARF/ARA contains the hash of EasyEUICC's signing certificate.
USB CCID Card Readers: Only T=0 readers that use the standard USB CCID protocol are supported. In this mode, EasyEUICC can access any eSIM chip loaded in the card reader regardless of their ARF/ARA, as long as they implement the SGP.22 standard.
Prebuilt release-mode EasyEUICC apks can be downloaded here For removable eSIM chip vendors: to have your chip supported by official builds of EasyEUICC when inserted, include the ARA-M hash 2A2FA878BC7C3354C2CF82935A5945A3EDAE4AFA