A person with knowledge and ties to one of the small operators within the GSMA eSIM group mentioned there are many problems with interpretation and acceptance of certain proposed guidelines, especially by the big members.
One big issue on the table is carrier selection freedom once you have chosen your initial operator. Big Telcos want to have the last word when it comes to letting you go if you decide to, and were trying to bake certain clauses into the agreement that would enable them to "oblige" the end user to pay a penalty for premature contract breaking.
Basically, they want to replicate the existing regular sim-lock model with the eSIM, but nothing else regarding free number portability would change.
Regardless of the eSIM, over the past 10 years carriers have been forced by their governments to unlock phones for free in many countries but have always ended up finding loopholes to make this really hard.
Only in Spain which has a population around 45M, we've gone from over 500,000 to just below 1M number portability changes per month so with so much at stake, I really doubt the eSIM is going to make things any better for the end customer.
Edit: formatting.
I don't understand why carriers feel the need to SIM-lock a phone that's on a contract anyway. I get it for pre-paid phones, the phone is partially subsidised by the carrier and they want to make their money back, but even there they have to unlock the phone after a year.
In the case of a phone on a contract, you're already locked into a contract. Why lock the phone if the customer is already required to pay either way. In fact, isn't it better for the operator if the customer uses their phone on another network, that way they get the monthly payments without even having to provide a service in return.
The irony here is that the whole point of SIM cards originally was that it made the device independent of the network and that you could move from network to network at will. I see the value from an electronics packaging point of view, but I don't see how removing a SIM card makes it easier to move network.
If they call lock-in and making it very hard to leave "Loyalty", then these businesses are truly delusional.
If people can leave easily they'll be forced to earn genuine loyalty, not this fake kind.
Hold on, so there's possible collusion to stop the standard happening?
And now a govt investigation of that possible collusion is ... stopping the standard happening?
But why put it on hold? Wouldn't it make more sense to fast-track instead after these signs of carrier collusion are coming to the surface?
Wait, the government is looking for collusion aimed at stopping eSIM technology, so one of the alleged colluders is actually stopping the development? In what world does that make sense?
Modern websites/services that use phone number as user identifier (or for 2FA) as opposed to email address (i.e. Whatsapp) stop users from switching carriers way more than need to get physical SIM card.
Previous thread about the investigation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16888016.
As an FYI, Google Fi has been using the eSIM on Pixel 2 phones and it's great. You can still opt for a physical SIM if you want, but I can't see a reason to.
Seeing how impossible it is to get the Apple Watch on non-"partner" networks, I'm very wary about all the supposed market reforms that are expected of eSIM. I'm expecting the exact opposite will happen, with more "carrier exclusives" and stuff like that to try to squeeze money out of customers. Just look at how things worked out with ESNs on CDMA carriers in the US.
Physical SIM cards have worked fantastically well and were one of the greatest ideas of GSM.