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Has anyone had to upgrade phones and switch AT&T service from the old device to the new? The current phones are mainly iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini with physical SIMs. The new phones will be iPhone 16e. Everything old/new is supervised and none of them have AppStore or AppleID/iCloud.

In the past we moved from SE 2020 to the 12, but in that case we just moved the SIM over. This time it isn’t an option. There are a few changes in Jamf Pro I am considering:

  1. Change our Prestage to display the “Add Cellular Plan” during iOS Setup Assistant.
  2. Update our default iOS restrictions payload “Modifying cellular plan” and “Modifying eSIM settings” from Disabled to Enabled.

I am not sure the first one is strictly required, but my testing with an iPhone 12 we cancelled the line for previously doesn’t display the options in Settings unless I enable the eSIM modification. Are there any other settings I should look out for?

ATT says they are pre-registering the eSIM, so we might not even need to change these settings. I remember having to do something with these for the iPad Pro, but that was for a net-new device and not a replacement for a currently active line. Thanks in advance for any advice.

There are some gotchas in the workflows from physical SIM to eSIM. But it’s been pretty straight forward. Some different troubleshooting steps for the techs if the network isn’t reliable during the transfer with the SIM to eSIM.

One key we added was Preserving the eSIM on erase. Saves us the hassle of calling the cellular provider to restore the cell service.
 


• If true, the system preserves eSIM when it erases the device due to too many failed password attempts or the Erase All Content and Settings option in Settings > General > Reset. 
• Requires a supervised device. 
• Available in iOS 17.2 and later.
• The system doesn’t preserve eSIM if Find My initiates erasing the device.

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