GSMA eSIM Specifications
The GSMA over the last few years, and with the support of over 90 organisations within the mobile industry, has created and currently maintains two specification suites; one for M2M and IoT applications, and another for Consumer applications.
The M2M specification was developed first and is built around the PUSH model, where all subscription provisioning operations are managed by a backend server. This is well suited to the M2M environment where devices are generally left unattended and cannot make decisions regarding connectivity themselves.
The Consumer specification came along later and is the opposite model (PULL) because here, it is the consumer that makes all the decisions around connectivity and subscription management.
We’ll be discussing both of these specifications in greater detail during this eSIM Engineering course, with slightly greater attention to the Consumer specification because, being developed later than the M2M specification, it encompasses all the learnings, and is seen by many to be the potential candidate for the foundation of a future unified eSIM specification.