Breaking the Lock-In Myth: The Reality of eSIM IoT

Jake Gilbert (00:02.101)

So welcome back to the IoT podcast. I’m Jake Gilbert, head of 5V Tech and your host for today. Today we are diving into something that’s getting a lot of attention in the IoT world right now, which is eSIM for IoT. Because on paper, eSIM IoT was meant to be kind of the end or close to the end of lock-in with more freedom, more flexibility and a lot less pain when you need to switch or scale. But the reality is that there are new forms of lock-in that are quietly replacing some of the old ones and they’re buried in.

technical architecture or operational decisions and people don’t always see it until it’s too late. So this episode is meant to be more of an educational one where we’ll cover the goods, the bad, the ugly, what E-CMIT genuinely fixes, but also where the hype’s getting ahead of reality and what still needs to happen and what you should be asking if you’re looking to build or scale in that kind of real world setting. So joining me today, I’m excited to say, is Henrik Agard, co-founder and CTO at Onomondo. Henrik.

Welcome to the show. It’s pleasure to have you. Maybe to start with, could you tell us a bit about yourself, maybe your journey at Onomondo and I guess why we’re having this conversation.

Henrik Aagaard (03:29.208)

Thank you so much for having me. I’m quite excited.

to join it today and then talk about eSMIoT. There’s no doubt that that’s sort of the talk of the town in our industry. And you can say all the promises that it hopefully will fulfill. Myself, I’m a computer scientist. I’m CTO and co-founder, as you mentioned, of Onomondo. And I’ve always been sort of fascinated by…

and say removing the barriers of whatever problems we’re seeing and very much you can say within the IoT industry from a connectivity standpoint of view there has been lots to attack and always try to venture in first and foremost with trying to solve all the…

challenges that we might have and again for IoT to really have acceleration and adoption of that and the whole digitization of our industries. So really excited and ESEM IoT is very much a talk of the town as we spoke about so I think it’s important for us to really make sure that everyone knows what it is and also what it isn’t and what to be aware of.

Jake Gilbert (04:36.543)

Great. So I guess on that then, before we go maybe too deep, let’s kind of set the scene for listeners who might not have a really clear mental picture of what we mean with this. So I guess to start with, when we say eSIM, you know, we’re talking about basically embedded SIM technology so that you can change profiles remotely on a software side without having to swap physical SIM cards, right?

Henrik Aagaard (05:02.176)

Exactly, eSIM IoT for the IoT industry is very much around removing you can say that lock-in that has been known to exist on physical SIMs that being embedded SIMs, MFF2s, plastic SIMs that you plug in. Normally when you were to do so, you would also you can say buy into the connectivity operator that were on that SIM for the lifetime of the device and for phones, consumer phones, you can say it’s at least a bit easier to go down and swap the SIM card out

if you want to change your operator. If you have thousands of devices remotely scattered around the globe, it’s not so easy and very much also not from a commercial standpoint of you. It would simply break the commercial model of business case for that one unit if you were to do so. And you can say eSIM IoT can unlock that in our industry and really put the power into the consumers or the users of the devices and really hopefully also then open up the whole ecosystem.

which has been one of the big barriers that we’ve seen affecting the IoT that is vendor lock-ins and the eSIM IoT is very much a way to unlock that from a connectivity standpoint of view.

Jake Gilbert (06:14.451)

And I know, you even from personal perspective, from a consumer side of things, know, the novelty of being able to just download a new SIM profile when you go on holiday without having to kind of get new physical ones, right, is not lost to me. And I guess when it comes to more of a IoT use case or a fleet use case, you know, what does that picture look like from then to now? And, you know, what’s broken originally that kind of eSIM IoT is meant to fix?

Henrik Aagaard (06:43.822)

think what we’ve been seeing and also that we hear a lot, you say from customers and partners, and again, this very much being focused on the IoT industry as a whole is when you are to do IoT, and you can say for the customers and for the businesses, that means digitization of their business. That might be more efficient way of running the business. It might be unlocking new revenue streams or new products, et cetera, all of that.

When you’re in the design and the build phase, one of the big hurdles were to who would you partner up with? One thing is from a connectivity point of view, but very much as a whole for everything surrounding the device and the connectivity and the IoT business as a whole, who would you partner up with? Because it would mean that the choice that you would make today needed to last throughout the lifetime of that device. And in IoT, that can be three, five, seven, 10, 15 years. And think of it that you can

say you now in 2026, if you had deployed those devices back in 2016, the choices you made there would needed to really work throughout the last 10 years. And I think that’s for anyone to imagine an impossible task with how technology evolves, all the acceleration on innovation and all of that. But for IoT and very much because we have physical assets, this is not just you can say SaaS or cloud solutions that you can maybe easily swap.

out with new innovation. This is physical devices that are deployed remotely around the globe. The choices you make, you need to make them as flexible as possible. And when you have a lock-in on a physical component, you can say in our industry that has very much been surrounding the SIM card or the SIM chip that you would sort of on. If you found, you can say, the best partner in the world in, let’s say, 2016.

But then a lot of things happened. You rolled out a hundred, a thousand of devices and then suddenly you can say the commercial model or the pricing is going up or there’s technology that has been deployed. You can say post your deployment. It might be that in 2020 we had new technologies on connectivity side and you would not be able to change that because you had this lock-in from the choices that you made many years ago.

Henrik Aagaard (09:07.042)

And that’s sort of the reality that we’ve been living in. Whereas eSMRT is very much a technology that we luckily industry-wide in the industry, industry-wide has accepted as sort of, okay, this is a specification and a standard that will allow, you can say the choices of your connectivity provider to be changed at any point of time. That might be during development, during deployment, post deployment, et cetera. So suddenly you have a different flexibility and a different

scenario for later in the years of your deployment that you can really tweak and enhance and perfect and change the choices you made before that. And that’s the new thing.

Jake Gilbert (09:48.264)

That’s it. So, you know, it makes a lot of sense though, right? Because before…

whether it’s physical switching pains or reduce leverage and all these kinds of costs, know, ESIM shows up particularly IoT and, you know, promises a pretty compelling promise to kind of open this up, give the consumer like choice, you know, back to people who are deploying at a fleet scale as well. And I guess to be fair, some of that is coming through and realized. But as we said, maybe there’s some that need some more work. So with where we are today, you know, what parts of the hype of ESIM IoT

have actually been deserved, you what is it actually doing well at the moment.

Henrik Aagaard (10:30.36)

think the most exciting part is still back to, you can say, the technical specifications which we’ve agreed upon within the industry, you can say, stemming from DSMA, but been accepted by all parties in the ecosystem. And when I mention all parties, that goes from everything, you can say, from the operators, connectivity providers. We are partially in that bucket as Onomondo. Throughout the SIM vendors and all the way to sort of the, you say, the customers or the users at the end of the day of the technology. We’ve agreed upon a standard and a specification

on how can we actually remove that lock-in. And I think that is tremendously exciting. I think what we’ve seen is throughout the last few years, maybe sort of 24, 25, there’s been a lot of hype, a lot of talks around the eSMRT specifications and design. We’ve seen…

You can say then perhaps sort very known to our industry, then also some very early movers trying to come out with products and solutions that were in the eSMRT realm. To some extent, unfortunately, what we’ve also seen is that not all of them were complying with how their standards were written.

And you can say to some extent also then unfortunately not fulfilling the promise of what eSMRT truly is, which is back to the ecosystem of everything working interoperability or together with each other in a no vendor lock in fashion. And so what we’ve seen is more sort of small pockets or ecosystems of closed solutions that were, you can say, adapting eSMRT technology or specifications, but we’re actually not fulfilling the promise of having sort of a full no vendor lock in land

or ecosystem truly. And I think as we’re sort of entering into 2026 now, can say to some extent, hopefully we’re going to see more adoption and more promise being fulfilled of that technology. But so far, that is not the scenario that we’re seeing. And I think that’s also, we can say, one of the reasons why I’m quite excited on talking about this. So we really can be aware of what is happening, what is true, and what should one very much concern themselves about when venturing into eSMRT.

Jake Gilbert (12:42.219)

So I guess to then get into the crime scene, right, where this actually happens and maybe to start at a technical level in the specifications. So, you when we talk about control and where that sits in these new specifications, specifically the SGP 32, you point and I guess others to the EIM, right, and being the kind of control plane. So I guess for the benefit of listeners, you know, what is that and why does it matter when we talk about this freedom?

Henrik Aagaard (13:12.002)

Yes, I think first and foremost, when I mentioned the ecosystem of eSMRT, at least from also a technical perspective,

There are three elements in that. There is, and I’m going to end up with the EIM, but you can say first and foremost, there is the eSIM profile. So again, from a connectivity point of view and operator point of view, us as Sonomundo, or you can say other MNOs or MVNOs, instead of us selling and shipping physical SIMs, plastic SIMs or SIM chips as such, we now sell SIM profiles or eSIM profiles. Technically, that’s called eSMP plus.

That’s for us in Unamundo, you can say a service that we run on the internet that give access to our profiles. And similar other MNOs and MVNOs have that same element, the SMTP plus hosted with E-SIM profiles ready for download as such.

That’s one element of it. The other one is then, of course, can say still the physical SIMs. So eSMRT still requires a physical SIM to host the software and to be able to download profiles and swap the profiles on those. Those physical SIMs can both be plastic SIMs or SIM chips still. They need to be open and agnostic to download whatever profile from whatever operator that you want to have as a connectivity provider.

control all of that, like which operator do you want to download a profile from and which one do you want to have active, all of that is controlled from the EIM. So a SaaS platform, you can say, that is hosted on the internet that you as a customer or partner using eSMRT, you can log into through API or through a graphical interface and there you can control your fleet of SIMs on which profiles do you want to download, which profiles do you want to make active, and then have the freedom to stitch together

Henrik Aagaard (15:07.012)

you can say your connectivity landscape to whatever the serve the needs of your products. So again, we have the SMTP plus technically we have the SIMs and then we have the EIM the platform itself. E-SIMRT that’s the ecosystem surrounding that and the ecosystem around E-SIMRT is that all of these elements can work independently of the vendor and independently of you can say whoever provides the SMTP plus or whoever provides the EIM or whoever provides the SIMs.

And that is the thing to very much be aware of because if that promise is not uphold, then suddenly you can actually have a lock-in in that chain that can be a lock-in to the EIM platform, meaning that, okay, you might as a customer of eSMRT solutions, you might have an EIM platform where you can freely choose between operators.

but you cannot leave the EIM. And suddenly you then have a vendor login, which is not only technical, but also commercially with that vendor throughout the lifetime of all your deployed devices. And similar, again, from a SIM perspective, you can say the SIM vendor that you’re buying your SIMs from, you need to make sure that they can download profiles from whatever SMTP plus or from whatever operator that you might want to entertain. Because otherwise you’re suddenly limited to only be able to download from these five operators.

And similar from the operators that you want to entertain, of course, that you can download profiles to whatever SIM and SIM vendor that you’ve chosen and the IAM platform that you’ve chosen.

So it’s the interoperability and sort of the no vendor login or that all the elements are agnostic to whatever they are interfacing with that we need to be aware of. So it’s again, it’s the promise of the eSMRT landscape and the platforms and the vendors that one is choosing that we really need to be aware of. And back to again, the technical aspect of this is that we’re suddenly seeing solutions being introduced where again, it might be that the promise of choosing a connectivity provider is truly open.

Henrik Aagaard (17:09.932)

But suddenly you cannot change your eSMRT vendor post-deployment after the fact of you being in production, etc. And that is very much the thing to be aware of. And back to again the true promise of eSMRT, what that actually is. It’s not only about, you can say, being able to choose connectivity provider. It’s around no vendor login as a whole in the whole connectivity space.

Jake Gilbert (17:34.812)

I see. And I guess that’s the part that probably a lot of buyers don’t realize is actually going on behind the scenes. It’s not just, know, do I have this choice right now, but it’s also really what, to what extent is that open in the long term and how much that may come to bite in the future? Okay. So I guess that’s where the loophole is, right? Which is the configurability, right? And what does it mean to have configurable, non-configurable at the EIM level? And I guess where does that

optionality matter at the end. So that makes sense. And I guess to maybe put some color on it with a real world example on what this might mean post deployment. if we think about a scenario, maybe a fleet scenario, right, and that kind of initial deployment. So if someone isn’t quite aware of whether they’re locked in or not, how does that look sort of year one, year three, year five, as you would naturally try to evolve product or platform?

Thank

Henrik Aagaard (18:36.574)

There can definitely be many different scenarios on how one can suddenly feel that vendor login. I think the best way to put it is again back to consider it as sort of these closed ecosystems or pockets where, okay, now you’re venturing into a vendor landscape and you can only work with the ones within that pocket. And a real life scenario could be that, okay, you might choose a connectivity provider where you ask for having eSMRT, you can say as part

Jake Gilbert (18:41.481)

Thank you.

Henrik Aagaard (19:06.488)

that solution. So you go to an MNO or an MVNO, you want to buy the connectivity, but you also want to have eSMRT as part of that equation, again, for you to at least think that you have this no vendor login. And then it might be, you can say within this solution that you end up in, year one and you’re deploying your devices and everything is fine.

This is in Northern Europe and you’re deploying your devices and then suddenly you as a business you want to expand into I think in our industry sort of the very popular country from a regulatory perspective is Brazil which is very much much closed to deploy for for you can say normal MNOs and MNOs unless you are you can say a local entity within Brazil but you as a company you suddenly want to expand into Brazil you have eSMRT so you have all your products that you would then think that you can swap to a Brazilian

operator for your deployment of those devices in Brazil. But then you figure out that, the eSIM IoT solution that you’ve bought, you can only swap to the operators that has also bought into that ecosystem and is part of that small group that is then either configured through the EIM or the SIMs that you’ve embedded into your devices.

And then suddenly you don’t have this freedom to choose, you can say your connectivity for the purpose of this specific product line or this specific market that you want to attack. Because again, at the end of the day, that is not part of that ecosystem. I think what we’re seeing very much is also more and more, can say, eSMRT solutions comes from the SIM vendors. Where normally, and that’s also a shift in our industry, normally you would entertain, you can say, a connectivity provider and you would get the SIMs from them.

That’s back to how it has worked.

Henrik Aagaard (20:51.776)

always and again that’s also the known lock-in that we’ve been aware of that okay I get my SIMs from the MNO or MVNO and then that SIM will work with that but now you actually go out and purchase you can say the SIM solution or the eSIM ROT solutions from not the connectivity provider but from you can say a SIM vendor or an eSIM ROT provider as such and what we’re seeing there is again and we feel that also coming from Unamundo that we are asked a lot from you can say

eSMRT vendors if we want to be part of that ecosystem as a connectivity provider where you can say we question that because the promise of eSMRT is that we don’t need those pockets that should be open for everyone. But whereas you can say the eSMRT solution provider suddenly makes up a business case and an ecosystem where they will tap MNOs and MVNOs on the shoulders to be part of that ecosystem so they can sell that whole solutions to customers that then will have the freedom to choose

between the ones in the ecosystem, but not everyone in the market. And again, back to suddenly you might end up not being able to deploy in a new market of yours. It might be that the commercial model for the connectivity provider that you work with for two years suddenly changes, but you only have the freedom to negotiate between four others because those are the ones in the ecosystem. So suddenly, again, back to what eSMRT really should drive, which is acceleration and adoption of digitization and

and deployments get limited because suddenly we’re back to you can say partially or fully this vendor login where you’re again fixed to only work with a select few instead of having the true freedom to select what is the need of you and your product today.

Jake Gilbert (22:40.033)

And like you said, there’s so many.

ways that that can manifest, you know, at a technical level, having to re-architect your products, if that ends up, you know, going on too long and missing out on cost savings, reduced leverage. And I guess, like you said, you end up in a situation where ecosystems and it’s, you know, do you want option one, two or three, but really they’re one in the same and they all kind of know what their prices are. And, you know, you don’t have much of a choice, right? And so I guess the question on that side that’s interesting is how much of this do you think is

structural legacy, times not changing quick enough and how much actually is quite strategic.

Henrik Aagaard (23:21.326)

Probably a mix of both. think there’s definitely the most obvious way to approach this market for many in this industry that’s been in the industry for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. The mentality is, you can say, owning the customer and owning not in a very positive sense. It’s more owning either contractually or technically. So that’s sort of the mentality. There is the fear of suddenly opening up because then you, again, if we look at us as a Mundo as a connectivity provider, then okay, suddenly

Tomorrow, we might have customers flee. And we don’t want that. We want to lock them in. That’s not the case with Onomondo. We are strong believers in freedom to leave. If we’re not providing the service, we should. But you can say that is very much the…

the mental model that exists unfortunately in our industry. That is sort of owning the customer, again, either commercially or technically. ECM IoT were to remove that technically at least, but unfortunately again, we’re seeing solutions where again, we introduced technical limitations alongside commercial ones. From a strategic point of view,

It’s probably a bit of the same as well to some extent, it’s also there’s again back to the shift This might not be necessarily directly from connectivity and operators. I think MNOs and MVNOs to some extent have seen and have acknowledged you can say the customer demand again We know it from the consumer party the Apple watch the Android phones, etc. Where you can if you travel you can

download an eSIM profile and get connectivity locally and stuff like that. So there’s sort of more and more an acceptance of that is the reality of life. That is what the customer wants. It’s a good thing, but that is what the customer wants. I think suddenly we’re seeing again a new vendor landscape popping up in this. I mentioned sort of before the SIM vendors, but again also eSIM IoT solution providers either stem from SIM vendors or again new companies venturing into the space.

Henrik Aagaard (25:21.422)

And I think strategically there, it’s very much part of the business case. Maybe not only necessarily to make a vendor log into the customer, but maybe more on thinking into new revenue streams. So, okay, if I make an agreement to, you can say, connectivity operator ABC, I might get a share of the pocket or part of the revenue or a…

you can say a kickback for delivering traffic or customers to them. And so there might be sort of a new type of business case surrounding eSMRT that now appears.

But then unfortunately you can say also on the other hand then removes again the promise and the true innovation that lie, that were behind these MRT. So I think it’s very much a mix of very, very deliberate strategic choices because of revenue streams in the business case, but also very much around.

can say legacy in sort of mentally how we work with this that again it was very much around owning the customer and not necessarily just wanting to provide the best service always and continuously.

Jake Gilbert (26:29.917)

It’s an interesting point, especially thinking in, like you said, a lot of other industries and kind of traditional account management and customer management mentality is really how do you own a customer, how do you extract as much of their spend as possible and lock that in. And I guess you’re right. Technical aside, it’s maybe a manifestation of that kind of mindset in whatever loopholes there might be in the standards at the time, right? Especially in what we’re talking about now. So it’s really interesting.

what would be maybe a bit of a tool, right, from a buyer point of view is what are the kinds of questions that people should be asking to avoid falling into those traps and certainly maybe for buyers who might not be as close to the technical detail and understand the specifications in the same depth.

Henrik Aagaard (27:21.934)

Yeah.

And I think that actually where it becomes very difficult because it can be very, very technical suddenly. think initially I would say that, okay, you need to ask if you’re buying the SIMs, is the EIM reconfigurable or can I download from any SMTP plus? And suddenly, of course, you need to know the abbreviations, you need to know the parts of the standard that is optional and not mandatory, but are those implemented and stuff. But I think first and foremost, it’s very much around asking whoever you can say these SMRTs

provider is for where one would be buying. You can say if it’s the EIM or if it’s the SIMs. Can this work with any SIM vendor? Can this work with any operator? Can I download these in profiles from any operator? Can I change my EIM three years from now if I find a better solution that might have more features or is more commercially viable for us? So it’s that mentality on really directly asking on the scenarios of can I

change this element, this element, or that element. And then one, of course, very much can go more technical depending on, you can say, the knowledge of one will have. And of course, I would also very much…

recommend anyone, of course, also to speak with us. I think one thing that we really, really love is also not just trying to, you can say, sell our products, but also very much educate around, what are the things to be aware of? Because I think one of the things we also try with Armando is very much be very transparent and honest on, okay, this is how the landscape is. This is what to be aware of. Hopefully, people will work with us, but of course, it’s also perfectly fine when we are not the right partner.

Henrik Aagaard (29:07.412)

So also very much talk with us. But again, very much have that mindset of asking into, and specifically ask about, can I change this element two years from now or three years from now? And how would that look like? One thing is commercially, but also technically, how would that actually look like?

Jake Gilbert (29:25.755)

And I guess to give the maybe try and give the balance on the state of affairs as is right now and maybe before coming to talk on to where things hopefully would go in the future. for all of the downsides and negatives there may be of these kind of closed ecosystems, are there any and what are the features that may actually be beneficial at least to some?

business who may be on a smaller deployment or at the beginning of their journey.

Henrik Aagaard (29:59.362)

mean, of business today, as you can say very much, what we’ve seen now is, at least according to GSMA, there’s roughly eight companies now providing eSMRT solutions. Unfortunately, five of those, meaning more than half, have not implemented features such as making the EIM reconfigurable, et cetera. That’s suddenly okay now. We have an ecosystem, closed ecosystem within that landscape. So you can say already now, early 2026, more than half, that’s not good statistics on fulfillment.

the promise of eSMRT. I think for smaller customers still, et cetera, there needs to be a push from, you can say, the market on making…

Companies like us, I think we are aware of that, but the industry aware of this is what we want and demand needs to be there and come from the customer, meaning that we need to have the ones choosing eSMRT also choose the ones that come with the two problems of that, again, no vendor login as such. So we need to see a market push.

coming from that. What we’ll do in Odemando is of course trying to educate the market as much as we can, making people aware of, okay, these are the things to ask about. So we hopefully get that movement going. So there is amazingly beautiful things around eSMRT. And I think one thing is again, what eSMRT maybe can unlock of use cases, but I think even more so what it can actually truly unlock for digitization and IoT. And I think back to again, we need to see customers being aware of this.

and take that seriously and again push that to the market so don’t fall into the trap of okay we’ve seen examples of okay the sim the physical sims are free if you choose our platform and I think okay be aware of okay why is that I don’t think anyone

Henrik Aagaard (31:47.094)

is giving stuff away for free unless they could see a different type of business at the other side. So really be aware of not falling into the trap of the, you can say the easy choice today, but really be aware of, okay, what does this mean year one, two, three, five, seven, 10 from now.

Jake Gilbert (32:08.543)

Yeah. And I think you make an interesting point, which is this isn’t just a business or a product specific issue, right? I know we’ve been looking at it in quite a micro lens for now, but the impact that it has maybe more broadly, certainly on IoT adoption scale, if this problem isn’t fixed, if this doesn’t develop towards a more open landscape, know, what do think are going to be the impacts on broadly that kind of adoption and those kinds of products?

Henrik Aagaard (32:38.126)

I I specifically think that’s one of the, it can hold back IoT adoption, or again, I’m using the word digitization because at the end of the day, think IoT is sort of a technology or an enabler to digitize businesses.

One thing is if technology is a barrier or if commercial model is a barrier. But I think what we’ve seen throughout the last many years is the fear of saying yes and actually venturing into IoT. I think we’ve seen lots of companies and customers making it a no decision because of the fear of, OK, I cannot decide if I want to go with MNO, A, B or C. I don’t know if I should choose technology X, Y or C. Ease of IoT as

technology can really unlock you can say that barrier of making a choice. So I think if one knows that okay the choices I make today I can change them six months from now or three years from now that will suddenly unlock the adoption it becomes less risky to actually deploy IoT enabled products. It’s going to be much easier and cheaper to make the decision of actually venturing into this from a business perspective.

So I think for us and for me, EaseMRIT, one thing is of course the insurance. If the promise is fulfilled on no vendor login, then what EaseMRIT enables is very much acceleration in our industry. I think the last many years we’ve heard of, I don’t know how many billions devices that were to be deployed and it’s going to be adjusted every year sometimes, 10x sometimes it’s going to be lowered. But I think a lot of it is back to again, people being afraid of making the decisions of actually doing

And eSMRT, the purpose of that for us is very much unlocking that and making acceleration happen. And I think that’s the benefit for everyone in the industry, both for NOMUNDO, but for everyone in the industry. So there’s going to be at the end of the day in a very positive sense, more business for everyone.

Jake Gilbert (34:39.017)

Yeah. And that’s something that came to mind actually, maybe the irony in this situation is in an attempt to try and extract as much value as possible through the lock in actually the long-term view would be that if you can open this up, you may have some insecurity in the meantime of customer switching, but ultimately if there’s going to be that many more devices, more use cases, more customers, like you said, the market is going to grow and everyone, everyone benefits, right? The tide lifts all ships. So that’s really interesting.

Henrik Aagaard (35:06.146)

Yes, yes, and I think I would just look at the consumer market as well. I mean, the fact that you want, again, your watch and your phone and everything else, you can download an eSIM profile like instantly. That does not mean that you have customers switching every third month to a new subscription. Because one thing is, of course, can take price points, et cetera. But again, if the quality and the service that you’re getting is good enough, then also you’re not thinking about it. That’s a positive thing. Then you’re not thinking about making the switch. So as long as I

think we as connectivity providers, we provide the best service and the best quality. That means that our customers don’t need to think about it, meaning they can concern themselves of other parts of their business. And think as a whole, again, we’re not going to see customers just jumping between agreements and operators, et cetera, because it is, even though it might be easier to switch the E-SIM profile, it’s still expensive to make the swap. So again, as long as the service and quality and everything that you’re getting from your partner is good enough,

Then again, customer switching shouldn’t be a concern or customer turn because it’s easier to switch, shouldn’t be the concern again. It’s more about a growing market. I think that’s the opportunity and the excitement that we should have around it and hence also why we should support it, everyone.

Jake Gilbert (36:19.211)

And is that perhaps, again, some of the insecurity of some of the players that when you allow the option of switching more openly that actually the focus then from a choice perspective goes away from purely kind of price and specification a lot more to full value proposition, service, features, and really the quality rather than just the cost or the availability?

Henrik Aagaard (36:45.794)

Yes, I think that that is very much the concern. And I think also that

You can say either again back to owning the customer, there might be a lot of the revenue and the current business that is tied up to you can say more legacy type of agreements and products. So it is very much a mental shift in again, very much be on top of the game and again, always have to focus on the quality and everything that you’re delivering as part of your product. And that is very much a mental shift in our industry.

that needs to be there. I think that we’re seeing it very much in the cloud space, in the SaaS business, where again, you can say new, true, good innovations and technology, can say adaption comes at a fast pace on that. That is good. We’re not seeing that in our industry. One thing is, of course, still we do have physical assets. That’s a different beast to attack, but we’re also seeing very slow adoption and very slow accelerations.

back to the fact that, okay, when the choice has been made, it’s sort of pricing and that is pretty much it. And in our industry also, a lot of the competition lies on price, meaning that you can say a lot of things is gravitating towards zero from sort of data consumption, et cetera, because in many cases, it’s the same service that you’re getting in many places. So again, price point being the only true thing to compete on. And again, I think that’s where we

taking a different stance at Monomondo and trying to make new features, new innovations, actually removing true barriers and then focusing on lowering just cost in that sense. For us, it’s total cost of ownership that needs to be lower. And so again, back to it’s very much, you can say the fear and the legacy of having.

Henrik Aagaard (38:39.63)

Yeah, again, that owning customer mindset and this is the way to to lock in and to lock in revenue. I think the way to lock in revenue was again very much around quality and innovation.

Jake Gilbert (38:50.129)

And when it comes to, as you said, really making that case and making that impact, ultimately, if what we’re talking about is the market kind of effectively liberalizing and allowing the competition to kind of flow at other levels, if there is a positive case that buyers and customers kind of need to see rather than just the negative on why should they be pushing providers for this.

in a positive way. What do you think the market and the benefits to businesses look like when you do get to a time when that lock-in hopefully is dissolved away, it is a lot more open? What are the tangible benefits that people will see when they’re able to choose from any provider?

Henrik Aagaard (39:39.086)

I mean, again, first and foremost, it’s very much around less concern on who do we partner up with. And again, it might be that today, you can say day one, you have a certain need, you have a certain market, you might be in three countries, and then that is your sort of needs that you need to have. Again, surrounding eSMRT is probably very much around the connectivity provider that you’re gonna entertain.

suddenly you as a company can see okay we see a pocket in country A, B or C and suddenly you don’t need to concern yourself at least you can say in that part of the business connectivity and all of such if that is doable. So suddenly it unlocks you can say it’s a mental shift in

Imagine you can say things in the cloud. That’s actually one of the best examples. If you spin up a virtual server on some, say, cloud hosting facility, you have the world as an audience or the world as customers.

When you do that in our industry getting the physical assets and the connectivity part of it That is not the same. That’s not the case There you have the markets That the technology view chosen the vendors you’ve chosen can serve So it’s not global. It’s not a global market today And I think again, we also know it from the consumer phones still as of today You probably have a subscriptions with a local operator and that is the sheer fun

of the industry that we’re in, it’s not global. EaseMRIT can be a way of unlocking that and making that part more global. And again, expanding the markets and expanding businesses for everyone in that. And that is also very much where telecom and connectivity clashes with what we know from cloud and that part of the world. Here we are still in a very different space. And where vendor login and even say non-global access and all of

Henrik Aagaard (41:44.304)

is very much present and again eSMRT is not the only thing but a very big part of suddenly unlocking that and unlocking markets for customers.

Jake Gilbert (41:56.246)

Interesting.

I guess also looking then to that future state, that picture at the moment. So we’ve talked obviously around what people can do to maybe check where they’re going to be at and look out for some of these things at a technical and also a non-technical level. If people are listening to this and want to also try and make an impact positively to opening this up and this kind of conversation, what are the best things they can do other than vote with their dollars and go with a more open provider?

Henrik Aagaard (42:30.742)

And it’s very much being very strict on requesting. You can say again, the interoperability and no vendor login from whoever they entertain to be their sort of solution provider. Being very strict on that. It needs to be, you can say, the default market design to fulfill this. So it’s very much again going away from what might be initial cost savings day one. It’s actually back to again the total cost of ownership.

but also throughout the lifetime of their devices, their project, whatever type of business that is related to what they’re entertaining now. That flexibility is upheld and is very much fulfilled. So it’s being stubborn around that and very much trying to poke and ask into those specifics and also see the reactions from the ones they entertain. Do they suddenly try to protect themselves? Do they actually open up? they transparent? And that conversation, which I think also goes

into the partnership that one should venture into. Is this actually a true partner or is it someone that is just trying to sell you something very cheap now because then again back to I think we all know it from social media and stuff you then gonna be end up being the ones paying for it there’s nothing free in this world. So it’s very much being stubborn around EaseMRIT needs to be fulfilled in the way that the standards were written and why EaseMRIT came about. That is no vendor login.

Jake Gilbert (44:00.944)

And from today then, so that’s the ideal case. Where are things moving, right? Because I know the standards, like you said, are evolving in the right direction. There’s some clash where some of it is not mandatory to implement necessarily, and there’s loopholes. So what’s the kind of timeline, what’s the roadmap that you see actually to this opening up and getting to that?

Henrik Aagaard (44:26.904)

think we need to have in mind that the specifications were actually finalized only April last year. And after finalization of that, there’s going to be implementations of that from Sim vendors, likes of us in Ormondo and others, course, meaning that it’s actually first this quarter, so Q1 in 2026.

where we are going to see slowly products and solutions coming out based truly on the standard. So it’s very, very new. I think that’s the first thing to really stress out. It’s very new. And even as of today, I think we’re having this talk today, we’re in March. So end of Q1. Still, we almost have no solutions in the market that is fully into and fulfilling eSim by DSMA and being certified and all of that.

So it’s going to be throughout 26 and very much probably also leaning into 27. So it’s the next year, maybe a year and a half that we’re going to see true solutions coming out that is fulfilling ESEM-RT, that is TSM-A certified, that is upholding the promise of ESEM-RT. That’s starting now. That hasn’t, that’s not been the case for the last year. That’s starting now. So it is the next year to maybe a year and a half that we’re truly going to see these products.

and solutions really coming out there. And that’s also why now is the time to be really picky and really sort of ask all the right questions to the ones where you want to buy an E-SMRT solution from.

Jake Gilbert (46:04.715)

And from your side then, Henry, as this is coming out, what are the things that you’re most excited about? Technically, commercially, you know, as this actually starts to come out and that choice becomes available to people.

Henrik Aagaard (46:19.448)

I mean from my point of view, very positively I really, really enjoy the competition because I think that fuels innovation. think with Onomondo we’ve always had freedom to leave, technically.

Funny enough, it actually has been possible for more than 20 years. Unfortunately, it required the consent of you can say the legacy operator, so the one that you were to leave from. And of course, I think everyone knows that probably people would fight against that. I’m utterly excited about again the fact that now we have standards and specification that truly provides you can say no vendor lock in ecosystem. And I’m truly excited about again the competition that we’re there

going to see when we suddenly don’t have contracts or technical logins that are preventing customers for adapting new innovations, etc. Because I think that’s for the greater good of the whole industry and for everyone in it. Again, it’s going to grow business for everyone. So I think back to eSIM directly might not in itself unlock that many new use cases, but it’s part of unlocking the whole ecosystem and the whole industry. Again, for just much more acceleration and adoption and innovation in our space. That’s very much needed.

Jake Gilbert (47:33.123)

And when it comes to Onomondo then and giving people a bit of flavour of, you know, what’s the things they should look out for, the steps that you guys are taking over there to take full advantage of that as well.

Henrik Aagaard (47:46.37)

I mean, funny enough, and I really don’t want to sound like a sales pitch because that’s very much against my nature. We are venturing into eSMRG. We’re only doing it because again, unfortunately, we’re seeing the majority within the industry not fulfilling the promise of eSMRG. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have touched it. Then it’s not for us. We have…

Jake Gilbert (47:48.019)

Sound like a sales pitch request, that’s…

Henrik Aagaard (48:08.428)

other things to focus on, we’ve innovated in lots of other places. But we are venturing into eSIJM and very much you can say from the EIM and the platform side of things to really come out with a solution that is 100 % with no vendor login and agnostic. People can leave it if they see fit for some, you can say more advanced solutions or for a commercial model that fits better with someone else. But where it really fulfills again the problems of eSIM. So we are venturing into that and also to do it as part

of educating the market and this is actually how it should look like. And also whether you can say the entry barriers is amazingly low so you can get started and really grow.

with your own business case, which again, I think we’re sort of very much inspired from what’s happening, you can say more in the cloud domain. We really want to adapt that into, I’m going to use the word telecom or sort of this connectivity landscape. But we are venturing into that. again, the sole reasoning is, unfortunately, we didn’t see that drive coming from the known industry as such. So we saw it fit for us to try and attack that.

Jake Gilbert (49:17.765)

And as we, I guess, go through that journey at the moment, everything being released, you know, yourselves and other businesses really bringing out some new solutions. What, off the back of this, are maybe the three main takeaways that people should hold from this conversation, maybe for connectivity buyers or enterprise leaders or the industry as a whole?

Henrik Aagaard (49:42.702)

I think it’s important to understand that eSIM is an ecosystem. It’s not a single piece of software, but it’s an ecosystem where everyone needs to be able to work together. And having that in mind, it’s also when you then go shop for an eSIM solution, whatever part in the ecosystem that is, if it’s connectivity from an operator, if it’s SIMs from a SIM vendor, or it’s an EIM from an EIM vendor. Making sure that this is an open ecosystem, and open is the important word where everyone needs to be able to work with each other.

I think that’s utterly important to have in mind. And I think it’s also very much to spend time on understanding what eSIM, both what it is, but also what it isn’t. This is a very small technical piece in IoT. For the whole, you can say IoT solution, the product, the business case, eSIM is a small piece of the puzzle, but it’s important to understand that so it doesn’t become its own small black box. So actually spending time on educating oneself.

in what is MRT. Have in mind it’s an ecosystem but truly also understand what is it that I’m buying, what is it that I’m getting and also what is it that I’m not getting. And then lastly, as the third thing is also

Make demands in this really really ask and request and demand you can say the promise of eSIM So we don’t end up in suddenly having what could have been but then suddenly Became what the telecom industry always has been which is technical and commercial lock-ins and all of that So yeah, it is understanding eSIM as an ecosystem

actually set aside time to learn what eSIM is and then be stubborn and picky on also choosing that so we as a whole, as an ecosystem, as an industry really open up for innovation and no ventralogging.

Jake Gilbert (51:37.74)

And so, so would you say in terms of a mindset shift maybe from people looking at this, it sounds like probably the biggest one to have aside from understanding the ecosystem is really ask more of what you’re being provided and really do your due diligence. You know, it’s not always best interests at heart when it’s a commercial standpoint. Would you say that’s probably the kind of mindset shift people need to have?

Henrik Aagaard (51:52.227)

Yes.

Henrik Aagaard (52:05.05)

I think that is very much suited. I think we have sort of a saying also in Unamundo is ask more from your network. And I think that fits very well into this. It is very much ask more and make sure.

that you find the right partners, that is open for innovation, is open for competition, that’s a positive thing, that is open for accelerating IoT. It is a mental shift, it is a mind shift very much. It’s very much moving away from owning the customer, but actually more to deserve the customer. And I think that’s, of course, in the customer’s benefits, but it’s also very much for us to embrace it, because again, I think the market share will grow.

Jake Gilbert (52:48.901)

And I guess to kind of wrap that then, you know, if people want to continue to kind of learn about this, educate themselves about this, what’s the best place to do that? And guess also what’s the best way for people to keep up to date with what you’re doing on a Monday?

Henrik Aagaard (53:04.046)

Well, I think first and foremost, maybe listening to your podcast. That’s one thing. It’s reaching out. It’s following on amondo.com, mailing list and all of that. But then also have a sheer interest in trying to follow, you can say the industry that we’re in, the market that we’re in.

Jake Gilbert (53:07.755)

That’s one thing.

Henrik Aagaard (53:25.336)

I would say pay attention and actually have an interest in the details in what we’re doing. It is still as of today a technical space. Hopefully the more innovation that happens, it will become more or less and less technical. But as of today and 2026, one needs to actually have an interest in it. But very much I think follow you guys and follow on Omondo and others. I think that’s a good way to start at least.

Jake Gilbert (53:43.147)

Thanks.

Jake Gilbert (53:50.355)

I think that’s a great insight to finish on. Take an interest and ask more from what you’re getting. Great. look, Henrik, it’s been genuinely really insightful conversation on this. I think, you know, it’s been a good reality check as well in an area that a lot of people think is already quite open, but may not realize actually what’s going on behind the scenes, especially people who are looking into this for the first time. Great. Well, look, if you’re listening as a listener or viewing this as a buyer and connectivity

The big takeaway is, I guess, quite simple, right? Don’t assume flexibility, verify it, ask deeper into those technical and commercial questions early and make sure that you understand maybe where the control sits and how you’re being locked in. You can find Henrik and Onomondo on LinkedIn. We’ll include links in our show notes, the description as always. And if you enjoyed this episode, feel free to follow the IoT podcast, share it.

with someone who might be interested in this and who’s kind of looking into these things right now. As always, thanks for listening and we’ll catch you in the next one. Thank you, Henrik.

Henrik Aagaard (54:55.534)

Thank you.