Lots of eSIM companies popping up and Smarty is still lagging behind?

Where to start MSF DarthStroyer ?

I will say that it’s becoming ever more apparent that Smarty Mobile’s value for money pricing is its Achilles heel - it’s a value for money mobile phone service, yet people buy the smarty MOBILE sim without any intention of using it in a mobile phone. “Smarty” now seems to be the byword for “cheap home broadband”, and then we see all the brickbats that Smarty is crap at running a laptop, PS4, YouTube, Spotify etc simultaneously ! 

Then of course, we get the people roaming abroad, who, more often than not, after using our help to change the APN in their devices, complain that the speeds on “X” network in France, Netherlands, Morocco, Turkey etc is too slow, seemingly not aware that they can manually select networks within their devices, in the hope of obtaining a faster connection, but also that Smarty isn’t responsible for, nor does it control, networks in other countries. 

People are indeed not aware that this is the Smarty community forum, and that we are just customers, so don’t have access to other customers account details, are not party to Smarty’s business decisions, etc. 

I do believe the old adage of “two heads is better than one” applies on this forum, or actually three, as you Chalkychap and I seem to answer the vast majority of posts, so much so that Smarty Mobile should put us on the payroll 😉

As for eSIMs, you know MSF that I am a big proponent of them, from my time here as JJP2 , I still use eSIMs extensively, having eSIMs in my phone from networks in Czech Republic, Poland and the USA, plus Airalo travel eSIM. I did hope, that with the advent of iOS 17.4, and later, which allows users to self convert physical SIMs to eSIMs within 5 minutes, Smarty would follow the lead of voxi and enable this, but so far at least, they haven’t, so Smarty continues to not offer eSIMs, which you, I and others can’t change and are not party to the reasons for this. As I said to DarthStroyer the curry’s owned “ID Mobile” do offer eSIM now, and having looked yesterday, they have competitive tariffs and allow an EU roaming allowance of 30 GB. Their international call costs can  be a third of Smarty’s too - 19p per minute to call the USA on Smarty, 6p per minute on ID Mobile, which still can’t beat Voxi’s 1p per minute of course. ID Mobile also piggy back on Three. 

I have no idea of the costs of fellow Hutchinson Company, high street personal care / pharmacy company, Superdrug, and their “Superdrug Mobile” and whether they offer eSIM. 

Maybe Smarty Mobile and others are planning on skipping eSIMs in favour of the coming iSIMs (Integrated SIMs) ?

Like an eSIM / embedded SIM, an integrated SIM brings the same flexibility in terms of connectivity management. You can remotely change it and manage the connectivity for the connected device – an evolution in terms of form factor and performance over the eSIM – but the core value and the benefit of the eSIM will remain.

Won’t that be fun MSF  People asking here when Smarty are going to unveil iSIMS ? 😎

Must admit, having looked at the offerings from ID Mobile, it is tempting to switch, given that they do offer such good value for money and 30 GB roaming allowance (I pay Smarty £8 for 50 GB on a 15 month special offer, ID Mobile offer 100 GB for £10)….That said, my life may not be the same without this forum and my “SFA” meetings”, Smarty Forumholics Anonymous 😂