The Apple eSIM, Apple Watch eSIM and MultiSIM Service Problem

From Error Report to Resolution — Through the Eyes of a Technical Project Manager

As a technical person, I've always been attracted to the latest technology — I like to be the first to try and use new solutions and features. In this spirit, I've been using an Apple Watch since 2018, and it has always been particularly important to me that the smartwatch works (e.g., calls, internet) even when my phone is not with me.

The Szifon.com website wrote about Apple Watch eSIM capabilities back in 2018, but this feature — despite being provided by Apple and numerous international telecommunications providers — was always missing with my Hungarian number, which caused a significant gap and problem in my daily life.

When Magyar Telekom finally officially announced in June 2022 that they support Apple Watch eSIM and MultiSIM service, I immediately signed a contract — but the service worked inconsistently, didn't work at all in roaming situations, and even in Hungary the internet and call duplication functioned only intermittently. From the very first day after the service was introduced, I reported these issues, with particular emphasis on roaming functionality, which would have been important since Apple officially announced Watch eSIM roaming support in the new iOS and WatchOS versions in autumn 2022. The error reports often remained unanswered or were met with irrelevant template solution proposals.

User Experience and Roaming Service Problems

I started researching in various Facebook groups and forums, and found that approximately 75-80% of users were complaining that the service didn't work in roaming situations at all, despite activation. True, there were a few exceptions — it actually worked for a small circle within Hungary — but the majority had the same problems as me, especially with international usage.

This clearly indicated that it was a systemic problem, not an isolated case. It is particularly important that Apple officially supported Watch eSIM roaming functionality in autumn 2022, but it still didn't work in Telekom's system. Nevertheless, Telekom treated each user as an individual case, failing or unwilling to recognize the pattern.

After reporting the issue in August 2022, a classic "ping-pong" began: first I contacted Telekom, then Apple, then back to Telekom — neither party took responsibility. One Telekom customer service representative openly claimed that the function was not supported, while another provided a specific link to the service details, and Telekom advertised it on their own website. This showed not only a lack of professional competence but also complete confusion in internal communication.

Lessons from Inadequate Project Management and Quality Assurance

As a senior professional who also deals with project quality assurance, I can clearly see that Telekom's experts:

• Had an inadequate testing process that did not cover real use cases.
• Did not conduct proper compatibility tests with existing systems (TeleMátrix and VoLTE roaming) before launching the service.
• Failed to involve senior professionals – as a project manager and TT leader, I can clearly see that quality assurance was completely missing.
• Did not take user testing results and feedback seriously from day one.

If an engineer had verified based on my test scenarios even just within 1-2 weeks, the problem could have been identified much earlier, and we wouldn't have had to wait nearly 5 months just for the precise definition of the error!

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