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?