About half of felix mobile's new customers picked an eSIM over a physical SIM last year, according to the TPG-owned telco's head, Kelly Beater.
"In 2022, about 50% of our customers signed up with eSIM," said Beater in an interview with WhistleOut. "About half our customers signed up with eSIM and half with physical and that obviously will keep increasing as more phones have eSIM compatibility."
WhistleOut understands that felix's eSIM figures are proportionally higher than the industry standard for adoption of the new technology.
eSIM - an electronic SIM or embedded SIM - is a rewritable SIM card that’s built into a cellular device like a smartphone or smartwatch. Unlike a physical SIM, there's no need to pop open a slot or pry off a case to put it in; an eSIM never leaves your phone. Instead, you simply download a "software SIM" from your provider of choice.
While eSIM phones have been around since 2018, telco adoption lagged behind devices. While Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone all offer eSIM, felix is one of the few smaller players to offer the new tech to its customers.
Beater believes the felix app is one of the core reasons for the telco's high eSIM adoption. The app can automatically detect if a phone is eSIM compatible, and if it is, it will set eSIM as the default option for that customer.
"It removes one massive blocker for customers [trying] to work out if their phone is eSIM compatible or not," said Beater.
"If people don't understand eSIM, it's hard to get them to adopt it. So by taking away that barrier of understanding if your is eSIM compatible really, really, helps with adoption. And once people do it, we see great feedback."
While Beater says eSIM benefits the customer experience, it's also part of felix's sustainability initiatives. The use of eSIM removes the emissions from the distribution of a physical SIM, and reduces the waste for the SIM itself and its packaging.
Because of this, Beater says the company is "really committed" to driving eSIM adoption as high as possible.
felix also recently passed its goal of planting one million trees, and it has now upped the target to two million. felix plants one new tree for each of its customers per month, and each customer can see how many trees they've contributed to the overall goal in the felix mobile app.
Beater says that felix's customers "really love" what the telco is doing on the environmental front. While the majority of customers sign up for the value proposition of unlimited data for $35 per month, many point to the tree planting initiative as a "driver of satisfaction" when surveyed in the following months.
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