Remote SIM provisioning - the organic revolution in mobile communications

In February of this year, the GSM Association, which includes more than 800 mobile operators and 250 mobile ecosystem companies, adopted the standard (specification) of the Remote SIM provisiong, which changes the technology for providing mobile communication services and business models for the consumption of these services. What happened and will happen with the transition to the standard?

Specification

Remote SIM Provisioning - the specification adopted by the GSMA , which allows users to connect remotely and independently of SIM-cards installed in the portable device (smartphone, tablet, smart watches, fitness bracelets, etc.) to different operators.

Prerequisites

• The development of technology embedded SIM (eSIM) - a new generation of SIM-cards that are embedded in the device.
• The understanding by mobile operators of the need to support the concept of ABC (always best connected) - the possibility of a better connection to one of the mobile operators at a given time.
• The explosive growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) - according to IDC, in 2017 about 2.8 billion connections will be in this segment.

About the beginning of the creation of the specification was announced in the summer of 2014. In February 2016 the creation of the specification is completed .

History of creation

Initially, the specification was planned to be created only for m2m devices, but in December 2015, the specification began to apply to custom wearable devices. Also, amendments were made to the right of independent service providers to transfer commands for loading SIM profiles into devices and the ability to store arrays of profiles in independent certified data centers (Subscriptions manager) was allowed. Documentation for the specification is available on request on the GSM Association website (GSMA).

Tectonic shifts

It is obvious and clear that the development of a standard will affect the change in the pattern of consumption of mobile communication services - the user will choose with himself what operator to be and be able to make decisions about the transition then (always best connected concept) when he has a need for such a transition — not satisfied with the quality of services, prices, departure from the home region.

Things are easy - waiting for the proposal to be formulated by the mobile operators themselves (placing the offer in the marketplaces and service providers), using the vendors' specifications of mobile and wearable devices, IoT, Connect Drive developers and MVNO. The latter will be able to integrate the rates of the service provider into their products - for example, the MVNO subscriber goes on vacation and receives an offer of additional tariffs from his virtual operator. As for vendors of wearable devices, using the specifications in their decisions they will be able to a) make their products global and not tied to any single mobile operator b) reduce the cost of owning such devices for the consumer.

As potential partners, we are at ComfortWayWe also consider the developers of OSS / BSS solutions and the MVNE company , with which integration at the module level of the software platform is possible, which I will discuss in the next posts.

Implementation

To date, only our company announced the implementation of the specification. While in open sources there is no information about the implementation of the standard by someone else. The client product was CwSim, which I already wrote about . We cooperate with 40 operators in 140 countries of the world, whose services we provide to users "on demand". In the near future, several local MVNOs in the product line will have our offer for their traveling subscribers.

Case of RSP implementation - carrier agnostic SIM CwSim for travelers


How it works

Participants of the RSP Ecosystem

• Independent Service Providers ( ComfortWay )
• Mobile operators
• Subscriptions manager
• Suppliers of additional services or services
• Users

Interaction scheme for participants


Lecture by ComfortWay founder Oleg Pravdin on the standard Remote SIM provisioning


Previous publications by
Habrahabr
Geektimes