Taking advantage of the growing interest in eSIM and iSIM technology, Nokia has launched its new iSIM Secure Connect platform, which has been designed to help CSPs and enterprises to deliver new 5G mobile and IoT services, and securely manage machine-to-machine (M2M) and consumer device subscriptions.
The embedded SIM (eSIM) technology is a hardware-based SIM designed to address some of the challenges impeding true scalability in cellular IoT. Compared to classical SIM cards, eSIM can store multiple operator profiles instead of only one.
These profiles can be remotely updated, extended or deleted with a remote SIM provisioning (RSP) tool. It allows devices to be deployed anywhere with existing cellular coverage.
But there’s more: an integrated SIM (iSIM) is a software-based SIM that takes all the benefits of a standards-compliant eSIM and embeds them into the device’s permanent hardware array by combining the SIM with the system-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture and cellular modem.
It provides lower footprint and introduces extra layers of security through a hardware-based secure enclave that maintains the integrity of all cryptographic and key managed operations.
Over the next 18 months eSIM and iSIM technology will help mobile network operators (MNOs) and communication service providers (CSPs) to deliver 5G services and products in the most efficient and user-friendly way is eSIMs, which eliminates the need for a physical SIM card.
Accounts will become much easier and cost-effective to manage, and it will be simple to connect multiple IoT devices to a single account.
“iSIM unleashes a wide range of growth opportunities for CSPs and enterprises and enables new innovations that build proven value on top of this new technology,” said Hamdy Farid, head of business applications, cloud and network services at Nokia.
“As part of Nokia’s Cloud and Network Services product portfolio, iSIM Secure Connect will help our customers both streamline the process of managing millions more device subscriptions and deliver more innovative services quickly and securely.”
iSIM Secure Connect, which will be commercially available this quarter, builds on that technology by flexibly managing device subscriptions linked to trusted digital ID for public and private e-services.
And by being vendor-agnostic, and working in various network and cloud environments, Nokia says that iSIM Secure Connect will support current and future IoT business and operating models, use cases, and monetization strategies.