Counterpoint Research is attending Global MBB Forum on 10th and 11th October 2023
Our Research Vice Presidents, Neil Shah and Peter Richardson will be attending the Global MBB Forum 2023 at Dubai, UAE. You can schedule a meeting with them to discuss the latest trends in the technology, media and telecommunication sector and understand how our leading research and services can help your business.
When: 10th & 11th October 2023
Where: Dubai, UAE
About the event:
The 14th Global Mobile Broadband Forum, hosted by Huawei in cooperation with GSMA, GTI, and the SAMENA Telecommunications Council, this year will provide an exciting opportunity for players in the mobile and adjacent vertical ecosystems to explore 5G business success, promote ecosystem maturity, and accelerate 5.5G commercialization.
With a strong speaker lineup and innovative product launches, the mobile industry is meeting once again to explore how mobile broadband technology is shaping the future and continuing the transformation of people’s lives and industries.
Click here (or send us an email at contact@counterpointresearch.com) to schedule a meeting with them.
Counterpoint Research is attending MWC Las Vegas from 26th September to 28th September 2023
Our Research Director, Jeff Fieldhack and Associate Director, Gareth Owen, will be attending the MWC Las Vegas. You can schedule a meeting with them to discuss the latest trends in the technology, media and telecommunication industry.
When: 26th to 28th September 2023
Where: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
About the event:
MWC Las Vegas, in partnership with CTIA, is GSMA’s flagship event in North America, aimed at showcasing the hottest trends in connectivity and mobile innovation. The event is aimed towards driving innovation in technology as people meet in-person and use their collective knowledge to accelerate technology and drive human progress. From carriers and equipment manufacturers to mobile app developers and content creators, everyone will reconvene physically to explore this year’s theme, Velocity, and showcase the latest and the greatest in technology.
Click here (or send us an email at contact@counterpointresearch.com) to schedule a meeting with them.
eSIM has been a revolutionary technology driving the digital transformation of acquiring, accessing and consuming connectivity. OEMs are offering eSIM capability at the device level, while eSIM management solution vendors are offering software and services to mobile operators to connect these eSIM-capable devices to eSIM platforms securely.
The benefits of eSIM technology lie in enabling secure and seamless connectivity from chip to cloud, leading to an array of new business models for a broad range of stakeholders. This includes transforming mobile operators, making connected enterprises “fully digital”, thereby reducing overheads, customer acquisition costs and complexities, boosting customer experience, and driving newer business models connecting people and things at scale.
Demand for eSIM management solutions growing across different stakeholders
eSIM adoption is growing swiftly across different device categories and stakeholders. Mobile operators, enterprises, service providers and even platform players are sourcing innovative eSIM solutions to go digital, expand their service offering, maintain redundancy, plan hybrid deployments to comply with local regulations, or address specific subscriber or device segments. For example, players such as Uber are climbing on the eSIM bandwagon to drive newer business models and remove customer pain points by offering uninterrupted connectivity. Private networks are adopting eSIM to offer dedicated connectivity to their employees and remotely manage the connected IoT assets within the enterprise premises.
Different flavors of eSIM management solutions
The incumbent SIM vendors have been delivering eSIM management solutions in the form of ‘eSIM-Management-as-a-Service’ as an extension of their existing SIM business model, with the storage and processing of the subscriber data usually managed by the vendors at their own sites or now in collaboration with third-party cloud platforms such as Azure, AWS and Google Cloud. However, in such traditional deployments, the customers, especially other Service and Solution Providers have very limited commercial and technical control over the eSIM-based subscription management and customer data.
While this has been the established method of eSIM management solution delivery during the early years, which saw very limited eSIM usage, the competitive, geopolitical and regulatory landscape is changing. As eSIM technology has matured with a clear path ahead to replace the SIM card, operators as well as service and solution providers are increasingly either considering developing their own eSIM management software or licensing it “off the shelf” and building a service on top of it.
Developing software and service “in-house” demands significant resources and domain knowledge, from software to standards to security. This makes the exercise incrementally expensive amid changing technologies and regulations. Therefore, using an off-the-shelf eSIM management software is emerging as a popular solution, offering the best of both worlds, i.e. in-house and as-a-service eSIM management solutions.
achelos GmbH, an important player in the eSIM value chain, is positioned to satisfy the abovementioned needs. The company offers a suite of off-the-shelf GSMA-compliant eSIM RSP software solutions with bespoke features and extensions that perfectly align with the different requirements of a broad range of players, whether MNO, private network operator, service provider or system integrator. They fill a gap in the booming eSIM RSP market, helping democratize the technology by offering eSIM solutions to potential stakeholders looking for eSIM provisioning capabilities integrated directly into their existing platforms or infrastructure at the software level rather than the traditional as-a-service solution.
Source: Counterpoint Research Global eSIM Management Deployment Tracker
In our discussions with multiple operators and stakeholders, the key needs and challenges mentioned are related to having more control, independence over costs, technology, integration, and data to manage the number of connected devices and connectivity on their networks. This is where off-the-shelf eSIM management software solutions are looking to help eliminate the significant cost, risks, resource requirements and compliance requirements. However, with the growing trend of sourcing multiple eSIM management and orchestration solutions, we believe the off-the-shelf software is a nice complement to the traditional as-a-service eSIM solutions, allowing these key stakeholders to strike the right balance between control and flexibility.
Firms such as achelos started as niche players, with a highly focussed “software-only” approach offering flexible, customizable off-the-shelf GSMA SAS-SM-compliant eSIM remote SIM provisioning and orchestration software solutions. These complement or offer an alternative to traditional as-a-service solutions by promising proof points across the following key criteria:
Reliable: Redundancy, up-time, backup, recovery, security, resilience, etc.
Scalable: With growing traffic across locations, device types, features, etc.
Compliant: GSMA standards, specs, interoperability, etc.
Comprehensive: Support different implementations – SM-DP, DP+, DS, etc.
Efficient: Costs, resources, implementation, time-to-market, etc.
Customizable: Features, services, deployments, UI, analytics to help differentiate
Furthermore, having access to an end-to-end suite of eSIM RSP and orchestration software and capabilities helps potential stakeholders co-develop distinctive features and services on top of the standards efficiently, with full control over security, scalability, and costs.
The key to success with this approach is in having a software partner which embraces open, lightweight, and advanced tools, frameworks and processes. This makes it seamless for the stakeholder’s IT team to co-create unique solutions built on industry standard-compliant and interoperable foundations.
Wrapping up
As the eSIM adoption rises across key stakeholders beyond mobile operators, there are significant opportunities for the vendors providing eSIM solutions in different forms. Different stakeholders have different needs, influenced by their digital transformation journeys, regulations, and need for redundancy or control over the solution and services attached to it.
As a result, we are seeing growing need for off-the-shelf eSIM solutions where some stakeholders want greater control, commercial independence, and sovereignty of the platform alongside the traditional ‘eSIM-Management-as-a-Service’ solutions. Players such as achelos are well positioned to complement and expand the eSIM solution provider ecosystem for the different key stakeholders in their eSIM transformation journey.
Counterpoint will be attending MWC Las Vegas from September 28 – 30
Our research analysts Neil Shah, Gareth Owen and Matthew Orf will be attending MWC Las Vegas, 2022. You can schedule a meeting with them to discuss the latest trends in the technology, media and telecommunications sector and understand how our leading research and services can help your business.
Click here (or send us an email at contact@counterpointresearch.com) to schedule a meeting with them.
Understand how mmWave is unlocking the full potential of 5G, and hear about deployment best practice from some of the industry’s leading experts.
Between now and 2025, a staggering $5 trillion will be contributed to the global economy by mobile technologies and services – with 1 billion 5G connections forecast by the end of 2022 alone (source GSMA Intelligence).
5G mmWave is a key element of the 5G technology mix, providing maximum data capacity at very high speeds and very low latency –thereby facilitating reliable and high-quality connectivity in busy areas and for high-traffic scenarios, such as densely populated residential areas, public transport hubs, large entertainment venues and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) in homes.
Our Senior Analyst Glen Cardoza will be speaking at the Advance Digital Malaysia webinar on December 14th 2021. The topic of the panel discussion is “Competing for Innovation and Investment in a Global 5G Economy”.
Session details: Tuesday | 14 December 2021 | 16:00-18:00 (Malaysia Standard Time GMT +8)
About the webinar:
Leading 5G economies are being built on innovation ecosystems solving problems or developing new business opportunities that create economic value beyond national borders. Digital society maturity, mobile broadband adoption and network coverage are basic ingredients for an innovation ecosystem but competition for investment, talent and success requires nurturing favorable assets and a whole of government strategy to be a leader. Past generations of mobile technology have relied on infrastructure competition as a foundation for innovation. This webinar brings together global experts and stakeholders to debate Malaysia’s challenges to create a vibrant and competitive innovation ecosystem to support its 5G nation leadership ambitions.
This webinar will focus on three areas:
Principles and policies to create national innovation ecosystem competitive advantage
Relative importance of infrastructure competition in 5G technology, network deployment and use case innovation
The recent launch of eSIM Discovery service integration by mobile network operators’ (MNOs’) body GSMA is good news for the eSIM ecosystem. The standardization of Discovery service is an important step towards completing the eSIM suite of services for MNOs as they can now avail customer onboarding and management solutions from one solution provider.
The number of eSIM management solutions deployed across the world has doubled in the last one year. There are more than 15 players which support GSMA’s SMDP and SMDP+ platforms. Out of these, Thales, G+D and Truphone have integrated the Discovery service into their existing suites of SMDP+ eSIM management services. These three companies are also the biggest eSIM management players. We believe the adoption of Discovery service across MNOs will see an inflection point over the next 12 months as the number of consumer IoT devices, such as smartwatches, proliferate.
What is Discovery service and why it matters?
When the consumer first switches on a device, he/she needs to connect to his/her chosen operator to access network services. The Discovery service is a digital method for profile activation which makes the process easy and enhances remote customer onboarding. GSMA eSIM Discovery matches the eSIM, using its eUICC Identifier (EID), with the owner’s purchased network operator profile. Therefore, the eSIM device is able to seamlessly acquire the eSIM profile from the correct operator.
Source: GSMA
The Discovery service leads to a simpler consumer experience for all Consumer and Consumer IoT devices. It does away with the requirement of integration between MNOs and OEMs, thus facilitating rapid integration of device activations across all channels. A consumer can now install her/his profile on devices via auto-discovery of devices and without the need to scan a barcode, thereby enhancing in-store and out-of-store provisioning experience.
Benefits of Discovery service span across eSIM ecosystem
The benefits of Discovery service will be felt both by the customer and the value chain enabling the customer experience. With the standardization, the MNOs, eSIM solution providers and the OEMs all stand to benefit as the number of devices supporting is increasing.
For the customer, it helps in smoothening the first step – entry into the eSIM ecosystem. The promise of Discovery service, i.e. fast and seamless provisioning, when fulfilled will enhance customer experience and thus reduce the friction of a new customer adopting eSIM. The improved customer experience, in turn, will help in getting more customers, thereby helping to start a growth cycle for the value chain.
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