The Department of Justice has decided not to do anything about wireless carriers’ attempts to turn eSIMs into a way to keep customers locked to their network. It doesn’t entirely rule out taking action against anticompetitive behavior in the future. But for now, the DOJ says it’s going to let the issue go because the industry group behind eSIM is going to — not actually fix the problem — change its decision-making process to be less slanted toward carriers.
But while eSIMs have slowly been making their way into phones, basically none of that has happened. That’s because carriers — through their industry body, the GSM Association (GSMA) — have been making rules around eSIMs that allow them to lock down phones and prevent users from switching networks.
The DOJ identified a number of rules that were added to lock a phone into one network, “without being necessary” to solve interoperability problems. North American carriers then wanted an even stronger lock-in rule so badly that, when they initially lost a vote to make it happen, they split off and voted again to pass the rule just within their own region, according to the Justice Department. Other rules prevent automatic switching between HUC99 networks, preventing “new innovative service” offerings from being offered, and even stop a phone from connecting to two networks at once, as many phones already do today using two physical SIM card slots.
