What is it? The year 2010? South Africa may be slow at adopting certain tech, but it always makes its way here at some point. Vodacom launched its eSIM service for wearables in March this year, and now MTN has followed suit.

MTN announced its new eSIM products today, which are aimed at customers who purchase a very specific contract. Its eSIMS are only available on the Samsung Galaxy Watch (42mm), which supports eSIMs. You’ll also only be able to get one from MTN when you opt for “…a 2-4-1 deal with the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 or Note 10+ on the newly upgraded MTN Made For Me or Sky Price plans.” That’s… weirdly specific.

eSIM(ple) as that

Okay, granted — there isn’t a wide range of eSIM capable devices available in South Africa yet. That just means that the more networks take on the tech, the more brands will bring eSIM-capable devices into the country.

An eSIM is a SIM that is embedded into the hardware of your device (albeit a phone or wearable). Which means that your phone or wearables can connect to a network without the use of a physical SIM. Devices need to be built for this function, so your old Galaxy S4 won’t have this capability. But this is especially useful for (new) wearables that have limited internal space.

How can you get the Samsung Galaxy Watch from MTN with eSIM support, you ask? You’ll need to upgrade to (or take out a new contract on) the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 or Note 10+ on either Made for Me or Sky Price. Other than that, we don’t have much detail about the eSIM service. We’ll get back to you once we have more deets. And, before you ask, there’s no new info on when we’ll have eSIM support for the Apple Watch either.