> The outrage bait about traffic being routed through China shouldn't matter too much to the common person, since we're mostly using TLS.

That should matter a lot to the common person, TLS or not doesn't matter, what matters is who talks to who, and who talks when. That information alone can give you many useful insights.

It might not matter hugely to most people, that's true, but as someone who's used eSIMs while abroad in both Australia and Canada earlier this year (from Airalo and Nomad - they seemed at the time to be fairly well regarded), I was surprised to see my traffic routed through Hong Kong in both cases.

Google and Duck Duck Go both on the phone assumed I was in Hong Kong when searching, even though I was in Sydney and Vancouver respectively, which did make searching for local places a tiny bit more frustrating.

What matters very much in practice is the latency. It's fine if you just need a little bit of connectivity to occasionally send a message or be able to find something on Google Maps, but just browsing the web can be painfully slow with some of the providers.

1/ ISP or the website Youre accessing can see the DNS queries and block traffic. My eSIM routes through Hong Kong, which means no ChatGPT.

2/ iPhones don't get you set the DNS provider / DoH for cellular

3/ DoH breaks wifi redirect walls, making it tedious to enable/disable. Like you cant just enable DoH for certain apps or disable it for others.

What if TLS won't be relevant in a few years to a decade? Bad actors can hoard encrypted traffic and have the data decrypted when the time comes?

So far, the main effect of eSIM was creating a lot of competition and forcing prices down.

If your provider is trying to charge you every time yo need to move your SIM, have you considered a different provider?

I've bought a 9esim, which is a physical SIM you can download eSIMs to. It's the best of both worlds for me, and I can move my data eSIM between phones, routers, and car.

eSIM seems like a gradual return to the device-locked model that was IS-95/CDMA in the 90s and early 2000s, where it contrasted with the openness of GSM.

I agree. Thankfully in my country (Australia) eSIMs are handled pretty well, no charges for updates/changes and can be done without interacting with a customer service rep. You can also switch back from eSIM to a new physical SIM (say if preparing to travel).

This is a place where I really think Apple, Google, etc could throw their weight around for good.

If Apple just said to carriers: "You can't sell any iPhone's unless eSIM activations, changes, and updates are free for everyone, and take less than one hour." I think many would follow suit.

Yeah plus you can take out the physical SIM to (mostly?) guarantee your cellular service won't be utilized by the phone. I mean, barring some hidden back-door eSIM, I guess.

> not only is eSIM a way for operators to impose restrictions on unlocked pre-paid phones

Are you outside the US? I've used eSIM on iOS many times with a number of carriers and MVNOs and never noticed a fee (unless you're talking about a postpaid carrier's line activation fee, usually around $36, not related to esim or not)

I bought an iPhone 16e which I am about to sell, not only because of iOS 26 (horrific looking and battery drain), but I did not know they switched to only eSIMs. I have a flip phone which I like to use when I have no need for a smart phone. Now there is no way for me to switch. Plus, I know when I take out my SIM there is no way any one is tracking my phone.

eSIMs just another way these companies are trying to control, and as you said, profit, off of their customers.

I see this as taking ownership away from the customer as well. I no longer own the SIM in essence.

Incorrect. Chinese mobile carriers only issue eSIM to their approved models, which are devices sold in China. Once the eSIM is activated, users can roaming with their Chinese phone number to any country just like a physical SIM card.

Also, iPhone and iPad sold in China can install and activate an eSIM from foreign carriers when the device is not located in China. They only banned activating foreign eSIM within China.

I did come across non-English article that all-eSIM policy is destroying grey market imports into primarily China and also into Russia. Previously one could easily flip iPhone at or above MSRP to milk carrier subsidies, but those flippers aren't taking iPhone 16/17 as it's harder for the clientele in totalitarian and/or sanctioned countries to use it.

I'm not sure if it's an undisclosed security hole or a backdoor, but there does seem like the eSIM push has something to do with China.

It could be simply IMEI tracking. Turkey also has it. Without being registered in the country registry, the modem just stops getting answers from cell towers.

To prevent them from using Hong Kong eSIMs to bypass site blocks?

> Never had a single problem with it (but increased latency because of weird routings around the world).

UDP (which WireGuard uses to encapsulate your data) traffic is often de-prioritized. You won't notice it when the network load is low, but it will seriously degrade experience during high load periods.

Wireguard is amazing.

I have an "always on" VPN routing back home. Anything destined for my home network gets routed that way, and there's literally zero battery drain.

I'm not paranoid enough to route everything through VPN though.

FYI, most of your comments show up as [dead]. I assume that the ones that didn't (like this one) have been vouched by others.

Not sure if dang see this, but it might be worth asking hn@ycombinator.com otherwise

Recently I was looking for solution to have multiple VPN running at the same time, and without work profile I am limited to one. I want to run two (or more) and be able to tell which app uses no VPN, which routes through vpn1, which routes through vpn1, etc. so far it looks like I need multiple profiles, and that requires root, which Google actively discourages.

Maybe someone knows better alternatives?

> How does that work with an eSIM?

Same, except you download it.

Install phone company app, login, and click migrate eSIM to this phone. Whole process can take up to 5min depending on how fast wifi is to connect to your phone company.

The flip-side to that is what if your phone had been stolen or lost? You're out of luck with a physical SIM, but eSIM could be transferred to a new device.

Connect to Wi-Fi and download your service providers mobile app. Load eSIM via that.

It's an emulated sim card, it really does emulate that weird little Java processor and everything. It's totally "SIM technology" in that sense, even if it's not conventient because of the restrictions of the emulation device.

The telco is probably from Hong Kong, and using home-routed roaming, that is subscribers access the visited network through the home PDN gateway (H-PGW). When I roam with mine my IP is always from my home country. There is nothing insidious happening.

Just switch on a VPN.

No reason to avoid cheap providers.

They have a lot of obnoxious advertising which makes me not trust them.

I've used Airalo without much hassle, but I can't say that they're any better. I did have an incident where the phone I was using broke, and I was unpleasantly surprised to find that I couldn't just load the eSIM onto the replacement phone, seems like you only get one shot at downloading it.

(Dragonpass is pretty good though, I recommend getting that through a credit card or whatever if you spend a lot of time habging around airports.)

1 GLOBAL is owned by 1GLOBAL Holdings B.V.

Registered address: The Valley - Beethovenstraat 505 North tower, Level 6. Amsterdam 1083HK, Netherlands

So we're at 3 levels of indirection on ownership already.

In practice, 1 Global is the trading name of TP Global because it's the successor company to 'Truphone':

> In 2022 the Company was selected in a competitive bidding process, conducted by a UK court appointed administrator of Truphone Limited (“Truphone”), to acquire all the business and assets of Truphone (the “Acquisition”).

And this company was an investment option for Russian oligarchs:

> In December 2024, German Manager Magazin revealed that Russian oligarchs Abramovich, Abramov and Frolov, who had previously owned 96% of Truphone and invested more than €360 million in the company, could still benefit from any success achieved by 1Global.

So yeah, maybe avoid.

Removing the need to ship a physical SIM card created an entirely new ecosystem.

There is very little difference between a physical SIM from provider X and an eSIM from provider X (except that one requires an available physical slot and the other is a pain to move between devices), but eSIM allowed many new provider and reseller business models.

In practice, this means much more choice, much lower prices, but often also lower quality because everything is optimized to be as cheap as possible and often involves roaming agreements where your traffic gets sent on high-latency world tours.

But then if Google's incomprehensible security algorithm locks your account you don't have a phone anymore and zero recourse.