TS.37 v12.0 Requirements for Multi SIM Devices

This document lays out a minimum set of requirements intended to ensure multi-SIM devices show consistent behaviour.  The requirements relate only to device platform elements such as hardware, protocol stack and operating systems.

In the context of this document, a multi-SIM device is any device that natively accommodates multiple SIMs. This includes:

• The device has a single 3GPP/3GPP2 network connection and a single IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identifier) with which a single SIM selected from several within the device can be used.
• The device has multiple simultaneous 3GPP/3GPP2 network connections and multiple IMEIs each of which is associated with a particular SIM.

Note: With the advent of IMS, it is possible to have connection to a 3GPP/3GPP2 core network without using a 3GPP/3GPP2 RAN layer. This scenario is in scope.

All combinations of physical SIM and eUICC (removable and embedded) are in scope:

• Physical SIM + Physical SIM
• Physical SIM + eUICC with one or more enabled Profiles
• eUICC with multiple enabled Profiles.
• eUICC + eUICC, each with one or more enabled Profiles

eUICCs with no enabled Profile are in scope but are treated the in the same way as an empty physical SIM slot. SGP.21 and SGP.22 v3.0 onwards define Multiple Enabled Profiles (MEP) to enable multiple Profiles within a single eUICC. Earlier versions of SGP.21 and SGP.22 are limited to enabling only one Profile at a given point in time.

Operations already covered by 3GPP are out of scope. 3GPP added some explicit requirements for Multi SIM devices in Release 16, but these are focussed on network efficiency and do not overlap with the device requirements in this document. However many of the requirements of this document build on 3GPP operations defined for single SIM cases; see below for the relevant 3GPP specifications.