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Comprehensive technical knowledge base covering 12 GSMA eSIM specifications. 84+ articles on Remote SIM Provisioning — SGP.02, SGP.22, SGP.32, SGP.41, SGP.29, SGP.23, SGP.25, SGP.26 and more.

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What They Test: Sending Orders, Getting Reports, Setting Up 📋

Imagine…

You’re training to be Mission Control for a robot fleet. Before you get the real job, you have to prove you can:

Send the right orders to the right robots
Switch their network connections on and off
Get status reports back from every robot
Handle errors without panicking
Set up new robots when they join the fleet

SGP.33-3 has test cases for all of these. Let’s look at what they actually test.

Profile Commands: The Five Basic Orders 📡

The eIM sends special packages called eUICC Packages to each robot’s vault. Inside are Profile State Management Operations (PSMO for short):

Order	What It Does	Real-Life Analogy
Enable	Turn on a mobile profile	“Switch to Plan B now!”
Disable	Turn off a mobile profile	“Stop using Plan A.”
Delete	Remove a profile forever	“Throw away the old plan.”
ListProfileInfo	Ask what profiles exist	“Show me all your plans.”
GetRat	Check what’s allowed	“Show me the rulebook.”

The GetRat command is especially important: it retrieves the Rules Authorisation Table (RAT), which tells Mission Control what operations are permitted. You wouldn’t want to try enabling a profile that the rules say must stay disabled!

Setting Up and Managing the Fleet 🏗️

Beyond day-to-day commands, the eIM also manages its relationship with each robot through eIM Configuration Operations:

Operation	What It Does	When It’s Used
AddEim	Register Mission Control with a robot	“Hello robot, I’m your new commander!”
UpdateEim	Rotate security keys and counters	“Here’s my new ID badge.”
DeleteEim	Remove Mission Control’s access	“I’m no longer your commander.”
ListEim	Ask who’s registered as commander	“Who else can give you orders?”

Think of this like a security guard’s keycard system. A new guard gets a card (AddEim). Every few months they get a new card with updated codes (UpdateEim). When they leave, their card is deactivated (DeleteEim).

Talking to Key Makers and Post Offices 🏭📮

The eIM doesn’t work alone. Test cases also check how it talks to other services:

ES9+’ Tests (Talking to the Key Maker)

InitiateAuthentication : “Let me prove I’m legit.”
GetBoundProfilePackage : “Send me that digital key!”
AuthenticateClient : “Here’s the robot’s ID for you to verify.”
HandleNotification : “The robot says the profile is installed.”
CancelSession : “Abort! Something went wrong.”
HTTPS : “Is our encrypted tunnel working?”

ES11’ Tests (Checking the Post Office)

InitiateAuthentication : Prove identity to the message service
AuthenticateClient : Verify with robot credentials
HTTPS : Encrypted connection check

The Only Full Behaviour Test (So Far) 🧪

As of the current version, only one end-to-end behaviour test is fully defined: Profile Enable via eIM Package Retrieval. Here’s the flow:

The robot’s translator (IPA) connects securely to Mission Control
The translator asks: “Any orders for me?”
Mission Control responds: “Yes: enable Profile X!”
The translator delivers the result: “Done! Here’s proof.”
Mission Control tells the Key Maker: “The profile is active now.”

Four different sequences test variations: with different notification methods and with/without previously enabled profiles. If Mission Control gets any step wrong, the test fails.

What’s Still “For Future Study” 🔮

Not everything is testable yet! Many test sequences are marked FFS (For Future Study):

Most ESep PSMO test sequences (Enable, Disable, Delete, ListProfileInfo)
All eIM Configuration test sequences (AddEim, UpdateEim, DeleteEim, ListEim)
All 11 ESipa interface test sequences
Additional behaviour tests (Disable, Delete, error recovery)

The IoT testing world is still growing: like a new video game getting expansion packs. Each new version of SGP.33-3 fills in more of the FFS gaps.

The extensive error case testing is just as important as the happy-path testing. For AuthenticateClient alone, there are 18 error test cases : testing what happens with expired certificates, wrong signatures, missing memory, unknown IDs, and more. Mission Control must handle every curveball!

Kid-friendly version of GSMA SGP.33-3: eUICC IoT Manager Test Specification, Test Cases

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