Who Went First? The Real Story of SGP.32 Commercial Deployments

The GSMA published the SGP.32 technical specification in May 2023. Three years later, the first genuinely commercial, end-to-end deployments are live. The race to get there involved certification battles, partnership announcements, a flagship MWC launch, and some significant jostling over who could rightfully claim each “first.” Here is the factual record of how the SGP.32 market went from published standard to commercial reality – and what it tells you about where things are heading next.

First, the Timeline That Matters

SGP.32 v1.0 was published May 2023. SGP.32 v1.2 – the stable, deployment-ready version – came in June 2024. GSMA certification programmes for SGP.32 compliance were ready by end of 2024. The first certified solutions launched in 2025. The first commercial end-to-end deployment announced at MWC in March 2026.

That is nearly three years from standard publication to genuine commercial launch. That pace is not unusual for a standards-based technology transition – the SGP.02 M2M standard took a similar journey from specification to mainstream adoption. But it is worth understanding the specific steps in that journey, because each one represents a real market development rather than just a press release.

IDEMIA: First Fully GSMA-Certified SGP.32 Solution

The most clearly documented “first” in the SGP.32 commercial story belongs to IDEMIA Secure Transactions. In April 2025, IDEMIA achieved GSMA certification for its SGP.32 eSIM IoT solution. In August 2025, they announced what they called the industry first fully GSMA-certified SGP.32 solution – specifically noting that the certification covered both the eSIM hardware and the associated remote management server (eIM) under the GSMA IoT Compliance Scheme.

That second part is the important detail. GSMA certification for the eSIM chip alone is one thing. Certification that covers the complete end-to-end stack – the eUICC and the eIM that manages it – is a significantly higher bar and more commercially meaningful. IDEMIA claimed this specific combination as their “first” and, based on publicly available information, the claim holds up.

By the August 2025 announcement, over 20 global industry players had already selected IDEMIA SGP.32-certified solution for commercial deployment, with more than 40 proofs of concept underway. That is not trivial traction for a standard that was still in its first year of commercial certification.

IDEMIA also demonstrated the practical application of their SGP.32 solution at Enlit Europe 2025 in December, showcasing real-time profile downloading, enabling and swapping across smart meters from manufacturers including Kamstrup – one of the more compelling early-stage live demonstrations of SGP.32 at work on actual utility hardware.

KPN IoT: Early Commercial Deployment

Before the MWC 2026 headline launch, KPN IoT – the IoT division of the Dutch national telecom operator – announced a commercial SGP.32 solution in February 2025 in partnership with IDEMIA Secure Transactions. This positions KPN IoT as one of the earliest network operators to bring a commercially available SGP.32 offering to market, doing so roughly a year before the bigger industry splash at MWC.

KPN IoT framing was clear: the new solution combines the best of both worlds, offering full remote control over eSIMs without costly infrastructure investments. Their emphasis was on giving B2B customers the operational benefits of SGP.32 – no operator lock-in, reduced long-term costs, profile switching without physical SIM management – through a service portal backed by an expert IoT team. For a national operator with deep roots in European IoT and automotive connectivity, this was a natural early move.

Tele2 IoT, IDEMIA and Cisco: The MWC 2026 Moment

The biggest commercial announcement in the SGP.32 story so far came at Mobile World Congress Barcelona in March 2026. Tele2 IoT, IDEMIA Secure Transactions and Cisco announced jointly what they described as among the first commercially available end-to-end IoT solutions based on the GSMA SGP.32 standard.

The three-way structure of the announcement is worth paying attention to because it maps directly to the three layers of the SGP.32 commercial stack:

• IDEMIA Secure Transactions – the eSIM ecosystem layer. GSMA-certified SGP.32 eUICC and eIM infrastructure that can be activated and updated remotely. This is the hardware and security root-of-trust layer.
• Cisco Mobility Services Platform – the orchestration layer. Cisco IoT Control Center with SGP.32 orchestration capabilities, providing the enterprise-facing management and control platform. This is the eSIM switching and lifecycle management layer.
• Tele2 IoT – the network layer. Global connectivity, remote eSIM profile switching, and local network onboarding support across markets with regulatory restrictions. This is the carrier relationship and coverage layer.

What makes this announcement significant is not just that it is commercial – it is that it demonstrates the full stack working together in a way that addresses the practical blockers that have held back SGP.32 adoption. As Tele2 IoT noted, customers do not need to make complex eIM or SM-DP+ decisions themselves. The three partners together handle the infrastructure complexity so that enterprises get the outcome – single SKU global deployment, remote profile switching, regulatory compliance – without needing to become experts in the GSMA architecture underneath.

The deployment model also explicitly addressed one of the most common early SGP.32 concerns: regulatory compliance in markets with permanent roaming restrictions. Brazil and Turkey are the most frequently cited examples, and the Tele2 IDEMIA Cisco solution specifically positions local network onboarding and compliance management as a core service feature. That matters for any organisation deploying IoT hardware in those markets.

KORE and Kigen: The April 2026 Announcement

Just weeks after the MWC launch, in April 2026, KORE announced a new SGP.32-compliant connectivity portfolio in partnership with Kigen – with commercial availability planned for later in 2026. KORE is one of the larger specialist IoT connectivity providers globally, and their entry into the SGP.32 commercial market signals that the early-mover phase is giving way to broader adoption among the established connectivity provider community.

The KORE announcement took a notably practical tone – focusing on the operational pain points that SGP.32 addresses rather than the technology itself. The emphasis on “truck roll” elimination, change management across device lifetimes, and the difficulty of adapting connectivity when networks, regulations or commercial terms shift mid-deployment is exactly the business case framing that enterprise buyers respond to. Kigen providing GSMA-certified SGP.32 eSIM and eIM technology across the KORE portfolio follows the same Kigen-as-enabling-stack pattern seen in the Robustel partnership and the broader KORE ecosystem.

What the Pattern Tells You

Looking at these deployments together, a clear pattern emerges about how the SGP.32 commercial market is actually forming:

IDEMIA is the infrastructure anchor

Across KPN, the Tele2 partnership, the Robustel integration news, the Qualcomm iSIM announcement, and others, IDEMIA appears as the common eSIM and eIM infrastructure layer. Their GSMA certification and the scale of their existing RSP operations – around 5 million devices provisioned annually – gives them a first-mover advantage that is difficult for competitors to quickly replicate.

Network operators are not leading, they are partnering

Tele2 IoT and KPN IoT are the network layer in these deployments, not the technology layer. Neither built their own SGP.32 eIM infrastructure – they partnered with IDEMIA to access it. This suggests that most MNOs and MVNOs will follow a similar path: adopting SGP.32 capability through partnerships with eSIM infrastructure specialists rather than building it in-house.

Cisco is the enterprise orchestration layer

The presence of Cisco IoT Control Center in the Tele2 launch is telling. Cisco brings the enterprise-grade management platform that makes SGP.32 infrastructure accessible to large-scale IT operations teams. This is exactly the eSIM switching platform concept described elsewhere on this site – the control layer that sits above the GSMA infrastructure and makes it operationally usable. Cisco is not the only company building in this space, but their involvement in the first headline commercial SGP.32 launch signals the importance of this layer.

Kigen is the hardware engine

ARM-backed Kigen appears as the eUICC OS and eIM tooling provider in multiple commercial deployments – Robustel, KORE, and others. Their C-SDK and eIM developer tools are reducing the time-to-market for hardware manufacturers and connectivity providers who want to add SGP.32 capability without building the security infrastructure from scratch.

What Is Still Missing

The commercial deployments to date are predominantly aimed at large enterprises, automotive, and utility-scale IoT. What does not yet exist at commercial scale is the simpler, lower-cost entry point for mid-market IoT deployments – the thousands of smaller operators managing fleets of hundreds or low thousands of devices who would benefit from eSIM switching but cannot justify the complexity or cost of enterprise-grade SGP.32 platforms.

That gap – between the GSMA-certified enterprise solutions now entering the market and the practical needs of smaller IoT operators – is where the next phase of the market will form. It is also where independent eSIM switching platforms, built on top of the infrastructure being established by IDEMIA, Kigen and their network partners, will find their commercial home.

The standard is now genuinely commercial. The question for the next twelve to twenty-four months is how quickly the infrastructure becomes accessible enough for the wider market to adopt it without a three-partner enterprise implementation project.

For the technical background on what makes these deployments possible, see What is SGP.32? and the Architecture Guide. For how these developments connect to the emerging eSIM switching platform category, see What is eSIM Switching?

From Static SIM to Dynamic Connectivity: How eSIM Switching Changes IoT Operations

There is a concept in IoT connectivity called a truck roll. It is the industry term for sending an engineer to a device location to do something that should not require a human to be physically present. In 2026, one of the most common reasons for a truck roll in a managed IoT fleet is a SIM swap – changing the physical SIM card to move a device to a different operator.

At small scale, truck rolls are an annoyance. At the scale most serious IoT deployments operate, they are a significant cost centre. A conservative estimate of £150 per truck roll, with a 1% annual SIM swap rate across a fleet of 10,000 devices, produces a line item of £15,000 per year that exists purely because connectivity decisions are baked into hardware rather than managed in software.

Dynamic connectivity, enabled by eSIM switching, eliminates that line item.

What Static Connectivity Actually Means

Static connectivity is not just about the SIM card. It is a whole operational model. The SIM is provisioned at deployment with a single operator relationship. That relationship determines the device coverage, the data rates, the roaming behaviour, and the regulatory compliance posture for the lifetime of the device.

When any of those factors change – and over a 15-year device lifetime, all of them will change – the response options under a static connectivity model are limited. You can accept the degraded situation. You can negotiate with your operator to change something within their platform. Or you can physically replace the SIM.

The static model made sense when eSIM technology did not exist and remote profile management was not a practical option. It no longer makes sense when the technology to replace it is available and standardised.

What Dynamic Connectivity Means in Practice

Dynamic connectivity means the network relationship is managed as a software configuration rather than a hardware decision. The device has an eUICC capable of holding multiple operator profiles. The appropriate profile is loaded remotely. When conditions change, the profile changes through an eSIM switching platform – no physical intervention required.

The operational shift this creates is significant:

• Coverage problems are resolved remotely rather than through site visits
• Operator contract changes happen at the fleet level rather than device by device
• Cross-border deployments use local operator profiles rather than permanent roaming
• Network technology transitions (such as 3G sunset) are managed as profile migrations rather than hardware replacements
• Failover to a backup operator happens automatically based on rules rather than requiring manual intervention

The Role of SGP.32

SGP.32 is the technical enabler of dynamic connectivity at scale. Earlier eSIM standards – SGP.02 for M2M and SGP.22 for consumer – made remote profile management possible in principle but not practical for the constrained, headless IoT devices that make up the majority of industrial deployments.

SGP.32 changes the picture specifically for IoT because it supports CoAP over UDP for constrained networks, asynchronous operations for deep-sleep devices, and server-initiated profile management without any user interaction at the device. The three changes that matter most for dynamic connectivity are precisely what distinguishes SGP.32 from its predecessors.

Some of the dynamic connectivity benefits are available today with SGP.22 hardware through management platforms like Teltonika RMS and Robustel RCMS. But these are proprietary implementations that work for always-on routers and gateways. True dynamic connectivity across constrained IoT – the NB-IoT meters, the LTE-M trackers, the battery-powered environmental sensors – requires native SGP.32 support.

The Transition That Is Happening Now

The industry is not waiting for dynamic connectivity. It is building toward it progressively, with the hardware and infrastructure arriving in 2025-2026 and the enterprise-facing control layer – what we are calling eSIM switching platforms – emerging alongside.

The Robustel and Kigen partnership announced in October 2025 is a useful marker. A major router manufacturer working with a major eUICC provider to deliver both a retrofit plastic eSIM option (for existing hardware) and a roadmap to native SGP.32 for new designs is exactly the kind of transition signal that shows where the market is heading. The question for anyone specifying IoT hardware today is not whether dynamic connectivity will arrive – it is whether the hardware and management infrastructure they are deploying now will support the transition when it does.

The eSIM Switching Layer

Dynamic connectivity needs more than the GSMA standard and the hardware to run it. It needs an enterprise-facing control layer – a platform that abstracts the complexity of eIM architecture, SM-DP+ endpoints, and profile lifecycle management into something an operations team can actually use.

That is the eSIM switching platform. Not the infrastructure. Not the SIM. The interface and the intelligence that sits above both and makes dynamic connectivity operationally accessible at scale.

For the technical foundation, see the SGP.32 guide. For what the control layer looks like in practice, see What is eSIM Switching?. For how different hardware categories implement dynamic connectivity today, see the eSIM Hardware Guide.

The Missing Layer in SGP.32: Why eSIM Switching Platforms Are the Next Big Thing

SGP.32 is getting a lot of attention right now, and for good reason. The GSMA specification published in May 2023 finally gives the IoT industry what it has been waiting for: a standard designed specifically for headless, constrained devices that can have their SIM profiles managed remotely without any user interaction at the device.

But there is a gap in the SGP.32 story that most of the coverage misses. SGP.32 defines the infrastructure – the eIM, the IPA, the eUICC, the CoAP transport. What it does not define is the enterprise-facing control layer that sits above all of that infrastructure and makes it accessible to the people responsible for actually running a connected device fleet.

The Problem SGP.32 Does Not Solve

Imagine you are the IT operations manager at a water utility. Your company has 85,000 smart meters deployed across the UK. They run on NB-IoT, they report twice a day, and they have been on the same operator SIM since they were installed in 2022. Your operator has just announced a price increase that will add £400,000 a year to your connectivity bill. A competitor is offering better coverage in the northwest and lower rates across the board.

SGP.32 technically enables you to switch those 85,000 meters to a different operator profile remotely. The question is: what does that actually look like in practice? Who manages the eIM? How do you see the status of each device during the migration? How do you handle the 200 devices where the switch fails on the first attempt? What is the rollback procedure? How do you prove to your operations team that the migration completed successfully?

SGP.32 does not answer those questions. The standard defines the plumbing. The eSIM switching platform provides the controls.

What eSIM Switching Is

eSIM switching is the ability to remotely change a device mobile network profile without physically replacing the SIM card. As a commercial category, an eSIM switching platform is the software that makes this operationally accessible at enterprise scale.

The functional requirements are straightforward:

• A unified view of your entire device estate and current network status
• The ability to instruct individual devices or fleet segments to switch profiles
• A policy engine that automates switching decisions based on signal, cost, location, or operator status
• Audit logging for every switching event
• API access for integration into existing operational toolchains

None of that is exotic. It is standard SaaS product thinking applied to the connectivity control problem. What makes it interesting is the timing.

The Timing

SGP.32 was published in May 2023. Certified hardware is reaching commercial availability in 2025-2026. The operator eIM infrastructure is maturing. The GSMA projects 195 million SGP.32 profile downloads by 2029 – 70% of all IoT eSIM activity.

Every one of those profile downloads represents a device in a fleet that needs to be managed throughout its operational lifetime. At current IoT device lifespans of 10 to 20 years, that is a lot of switching decisions, a lot of migration events, and a lot of operational complexity to manage without a proper control layer.

The market is creating demand for eSIM switching platforms faster than the platforms are being built. That gap is where the commercial opportunity sits.

What Already Exists

Several providers are building toward eSIM switching capability without necessarily naming it that way. Wireless Logic has built substantial eIM infrastructure and positions their platform as connectivity orchestration. Eseye offers multi-network profile management through their AnyNet+ platform. Tele2 IoT has built out bootstrap and provisioning capabilities that feed into managed switching for their hardware partners.

What is largely absent is a clean, vendor-neutral, product-category-named eSIM switching platform – something that positions itself explicitly as the control layer for profile orchestration, acknowledges the SGP.32 standard as its technical foundation, and presents the enterprise value proposition clearly without hiding it behind MVNO product branding.

That gap will close. The question is who closes it first and whether they name the category while doing so.

The SGP.32 Connection

SGP.32 is the standard. eSIM switching is the application. The relationship is the same as the one between TCP/IP and the internet applications that run on top of it. The protocol makes the capability possible. The application layer is where users actually interact with it.

For anyone building or specifying IoT connectivity infrastructure today, understanding both layers matters. The SGP.32 architecture guide on this site covers the standard in depth. The eSIM switching concept covers what the application layer looks like and why it matters commercially.

The devices are being deployed. The standard is maturing. The hardware is arriving. The control layer is the piece that is still being built.

Telenor IoT Goes Live with SGP.32 Today: What It Means and Why It Matters

Today – 17 April 2026 – Telenor IoT begins commercial delivery of SGP.32 SIM cards. This is not another announcement. It is not a roadmap commitment or a proof of concept. Physical SGP.32 SIMs are being shipped to paying customers today.

For anyone watching the SGP.32 market mature, this is a significant date. Telenor IoT is one of the most established names in global IoT connectivity, with over 30 million connected devices in operation and enterprise customers including Volvo Cars, Scania, Hitachi, Verisure, and Great Wall Motors. When an operator at this scale moves from pilot to commercial delivery, the market moves with it.

What Telenor Announced and When

Telenor IoT made the announcement on 27 February 2026 – not coincidentally at the same time as Mobile World Congress was running in Barcelona, where Tele2, IDEMIA and Cisco were also announcing their own SGP.32 commercial launch. February 27 was a busy day for SGP.32 news.

The announcement was specific: SGP.32 SIM cards available for ordering immediately, with deliveries beginning 17 April 2026. The April date has been maintained. Today is that date.

Telenor IoT has history with this standard. They were among the first operators to launch SGP.02 when that standard arrived years ago. They committed to SGP.32 adoption publicly in April 2025, a year before the commercial launch. This is not a reactive move – it is the execution of a planned transition that has been in progress for twelve months.

What Telenor IoT Is Actually Offering

The commercial SGP.32 offering from Telenor IoT is a standardised eSIM SIM card – a physical card with an eUICC that implements the full GSMA SGP.32 v1.2 specification. This means it supports the eIM (eSIM IoT Manager) architecture, server-initiated profile management, and – critically – the open standards that prevent vendor lock-in.

Telenor is explicit about this. Their positioning centres on three things: interoperability, lifecycle flexibility, and regulatory compliance. The SGP.32 standard eliminates compatibility issues that existed with proprietary or non-standardised eSIM approaches. It enables devices to be managed without heavy backend integrations. And it provides a path to inject locally compliant profiles in markets where permanent roaming is restricted – Brazil and Turkey being the most frequently cited examples.

Telenor also offers test agreements for companies wanting to evaluate SGP.32 before committing to large-scale deployment. This is a sensible commercial approach given that the ecosystem is still maturing – hardware certification pipelines take time, and enterprises need confidence before specifying SGP.32 across a new product line.

Why Telenor Matters More Than Most

There have been several SGP.32 commercial announcements in the past twelve months. IDEMIA achieved GSMA certification in April 2025. KPN IoT launched a commercial SGP.32 solution in February 2025. Tele2 IoT, IDEMIA and Cisco announced an end-to-end solution at MWC in March 2026. KORE announced their SGP.32 portfolio in April 2026.

Telenor IoT sits in a different tier of significance for the UK and European market. Their connectivity platform already reaches enterprises in the Nordic and Baltic region, EMEA, the Americas, and APAC. They have been operating IoT connectivity for over 20 years. They are listed in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Managed IoT Connectivity Services for the eighth consecutive year.

When Telenor adds a standard to their commercial portfolio, enterprises already working with them get SGP.32 capability without changing provider relationships. That is a very different adoption path from the IDEMIA certification story, which required enterprises to actively seek out a new infrastructure partner.

What SGP.32 Enables That Earlier Standards Could Not

For anyone new to the standard, the Telenor launch is a useful moment to explain what SGP.32 actually changes in practice. Earlier eSIM standards – SGP.02 for M2M and SGP.22 for consumer – either required complex SM-SR infrastructure with operator lock-in, or assumed a user would be present to initiate profile changes via QR code. Neither worked well for headless IoT at scale.

SGP.32 addresses both problems. Server-initiated management via the eIM means no user interaction is needed at the device. CoAP transport over UDP means the protocol works on NB-IoT and LTE-M networks where data budgets are measured in kilobytes. Asynchronous operations mean devices in deep sleep can receive profile change instructions and act on them when they next wake.

For Telenor IoT customers deploying in regulated markets, the locally compliant profile capability is the headline feature. Permanent roaming restrictions in Brazil, Turkey, and other markets require devices to use a local operator profile rather than connecting permanently via a foreign SIM. Under SGP.32, this switch happens remotely over the air. Under older standards, it required a physical SIM swap or a proprietary workaround.

Telenor and the Bootstrap Question

One detail that Telenor IoT is well placed to answer is the bootstrap question – how does a device get its first SGP.32 profile before it has any operational connectivity? Telenor has deep experience with SGP.02 bootstrap provisioning across their existing fleet, and their SGP.32 offering will need to bring the same rigour to the newer standard.

The Teltonika and Tele2 partnership gives a useful reference point here – Tele2 IoT provides the bootstrap profile pre-loaded on Teltonika routers, providing initial global connectivity for the first-time provisioning sequence. Telenor IoT is a direct competitor to Tele2 in this space and will need to provide an equivalent bootstrap pathway for SGP.32 devices in their ecosystem.

For enterprises evaluating Telenor IoT SGP.32, the bootstrap question is worth raising directly: what bootstrap profile ships with the SGP.32 SIM, what is the validity period, what networks does it roam on, and what is the recovery path if the initial provisioning fails?

What This Launch Does Not Mean

Being precise about scope matters here. Telenor IoT going live with SGP.32 SIM cards does not mean SGP.32 hardware is widely available or that the ecosystem is fully mature. The bottleneck in SGP.32 adoption has never been the connectivity provider – it has been the device hardware. Certified SGP.32 eUICC chips need to make their way from chip suppliers through module manufacturers and into device designs before SGP.32 can be deployed at the scale that Telenor IoT and the rest of the operator community are building toward.

Telenor acknowledges this directly in their SGP.32 documentation, noting that ecosystem support across device vendors and profile providers continues to mature. They recommend enterprises evaluate compatibility and readiness across their full value chain before committing to SGP.32 for a new deployment.

The significance of today is not that SGP.32 is everywhere. It is that a major operator with genuine enterprise relationships and operational scale has moved the standard from roadmap to reality. That changes the conversation in procurement meetings. When a CTO asks their IoT connectivity provider whether they support SGP.32 and the answer is yes with a commercial product and real customers behind it, the standard moves from emerging to established in enterprise perception.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Telenor IoT the first operator to commercially launch SGP.32?

No. KPN IoT launched a commercial SGP.32 solution in February 2025 in partnership with IDEMIA. Tele2 IoT, IDEMIA and Cisco announced an end-to-end commercial SGP.32 solution at MWC in March 2026. Telenor is among the first operators to ship physical SGP.32 SIM cards to customers at commercial scale, but it is part of a wave of launches in 2025-2026, not an isolated first.

Can I order Telenor IoT SGP.32 SIMs in the UK?

Telenor IoT operates globally and serves UK enterprise customers. Their sales presence covers EMEA. UK enterprises should contact Telenor IoT directly to discuss SGP.32 SIM availability and test agreement options. The direct route is iot.telenor.com/contact.

Does Telenor IoT SGP.32 work with Teltonika routers?

Teltonika routers currently use SGP.22, managed via RMS. They are not native SGP.32 devices. A Telenor IoT SGP.32 SIM in a Teltonika router would operate as an SGP.22 profile unless Teltonika releases SGP.32-compatible firmware. The two standards are separate architectures – see the standards comparison for the technical differences.

What does SGP.32 mean for permanent roaming restrictions?

SGP.32 enables remote injection of locally compliant operator profiles, which resolves the permanent roaming problem for markets like Brazil and Turkey. Telenor IoT specifically highlights this as a core benefit of their SGP.32 offering. See the eSIM benefits guide for a full explanation.

What is the difference between SGP.32 and SGP.22?

SGP.22 is the consumer eSIM standard – it requires a user to initiate profile changes via QR code or app. SGP.32 is the IoT eSIM standard – profile management is server-initiated with no user required. SGP.32 also supports CoAP for constrained networks that cannot handle HTTPS. Full comparison at SGP.32 vs SGP.02 vs SGP.22.

What is an eIM and do I need one?

The eIM (eSIM IoT Manager) is the server-side component that manages profile lifecycle in SGP.32. Telenor IoT operates the eIM infrastructure for their customers – you do not need to build or host your own. If you are evaluating independent eIM platforms, the provider questions guide covers what to ask about eIM portability and security accreditation.

When will SGP.32 hardware be widely available?

Certified SGP.32 modules from Quectel, Thales, and Kigen are entering commercial availability in 2025-2026. The hardware certification pipeline lags the standards publication by 12-18 months. New IoT hardware designs started in 2025 or later should specify SGP.32-capable eUICC chips. For a full hardware landscape overview, see the eSIM hardware guide.