The rumours surrounding the upcoming iPhone Air suggest it will not have a physical SIM tray and will rely entirely on eSIM technology. Fine. I like eSIMs. My primary line uses an eSIM and when I'm travelling outside of Southeast Asia I use Airalo to get a local eSIM for data purposes.

My problem with the eSIM-only model is the behaviour of the networks. A few of the networks in Singapore treat eSIMs as a profit centre (and I'm sure they're not the only ones):

  • M1: You will be able to retain your 5G eSIM number however you will need to remove your eSIM profile from the current device and re-download into the new intended device (a fee of $5.45 applies for the re-download).
  • Singtel: Chat with us to get another eSIM. Each replacement costs $10.90.

$10.90 for a physical sim is expensive, but for eSIM it is downright outrageous. If an eSIM is roughly 50 kilobytes and a new/replacement is $10.90, that's ~22 cents per kilobyte (or, inflation adjusted, 20x more expensive per KB than initial AOL dial up). Luckily, $5.45 is exactly half the price — bargain!

Here are just a few scenarios where these fees could apply, which highlights their absurdity:

  • Buying a new phone, deleting your old eSIM, and downloading a new eSIM
  • Losing your phone, buying a new phone, deleting your old eSIM (via the network's app), and downloading a new eSIM
  • Erasing all content and settings, deleting your old eSIM (via the network's app), and downloading a new eSIM

In the olden days, you just moved your SIM card between devices. It was free and easy to do.