GizmoChina
Topics: Contract, Relationship, Network Tech
Transcript Excerpt:
People have three cars that are owned by a car manufacturer, and in order to manage supply, that car manufacturer wishes to source the SIM chips from several vendors. Now imagine that car manufacturer which has a contract with Operator One and Operator Two. Although the GSM embedded SIM specification has been available for more than a year, the actual format of certain profile data was never standardized. People can see that Operator One is able to create profiles using SIM Vendor A and download them to the first car due to the shape of that profile. Operator One is also able to create profiles for some Vendor B; however, people should note that these profiles have a slightly different shape, making them incompatible. As a result, one cannot download a profile created by Vendor B into a product created by Vendor A. Imagine that the car manufacturer wants to switch operators after its contract with operator one expires. In this case, operator two already has a relationship with the SIM vendor, so it can create profiles and download them to the first car. Operator two also has a relationship with the SIM vendor, see, and can create profiles to download to the third car. However, since operator two does not have a contract with the SIM vendor P, it is not possible to download profiles to that second vehicle. How do people fix this? Well, operator two only needs to establish a business partnership with a vendor named B in order to create profiles and download them to the second car, enabling the car manufacturer to source from at least two SIM vendors, A and B, and of course, operator one could establish a business contract with a vendor named C, enabling the car manufacturer to purchase goods from all three sources, but this is technically possible. So how do they swiftly enter a market with billions of end-to-end devices? By standardizing on a basic file format that we refer to as an interoperable profile. Any operator can get in touch with any of their SIM vendors, build a profile, and then download that profile to another SIM vendor’s chip. This video focuses on explaining the way the GSMA Embedded SIM Specification enables for interoperability and economies of scale in M2M operations. The difference between an operator and sim vendor is that an operator operates the mobile networks. While on the other hand a sim vendor manufactures the sim cards and keeps a good relationship with the operators.
