SGP.02

SGP.02 is the GSMA technical specification for remote provisioning of eSIMs in machine-to-machine (M2M) devices. The GSMA’s first eSIM specification, it defines a server-driven model in which the operator’s SM-SR pushes profiles to the device’s eUICC and manages them remotely, with no user and no decision-making on the device.

How SGP.02 works

• SM-DP prepares and encrypts operator profiles.
• SM-SR holds the secure link to the eUICC’s root security domain, delivers profiles and executes enable, disable and delete commands.
• The eUICC ships with a provisioning profile — a form of bootstrap profile — so the SM-SR can reach it from day one.
• Transport is typically an SMS wake-up followed by a session over SMS, CAT_TP or HTTPS.

The operator’s systems talk to the SM-SR, and the device is passive. That design suited early automotive and industrial deployments, where devices were provisioned centrally and rarely changed operator.

Limitations

SGP.02’s main drawback is integration overhead. Each eUICC is managed by one SM-SR, so changing operators requires the new operator’s SM-DP to integrate with that SM-SR — or a full SM-SR change between platforms. With many operators and many SM-SR platforms, the number of bilateral integrations grew quickly. Reliance on SMS for wake-up is also a poor fit for NB-IoT and LTE-M devices, which spend long periods asleep and may be on networks where SMS support varies.

SGP.02 vs. later specifications

	SGP.02	SGP.22	SGP.32
Target	M2M	Consumer	IoT
Model	Server push via SM-SR	User-driven via the LPA	Remote manager (eIM) triggers the device
Profile server	SM-DP	SM-DP+	SM-DP+
User interface	None	Required	None

SGP.32 is not backward compatible with SGP.02, but it reuses the SGP.22 SM-DP+ infrastructure. SGP.02 devices will stay in service for years, so many fleets will run both models side by side.

Why it matters for testing

Mixed SGP.02 and SGP.32 fleets need both provisioning paths verified — SMS reachability and SM-SR operations on one side, eIM-driven downloads on the other — followed by the same attach and data checks on every profile. The guide SGP.32 vs SGP.22 vs SGP.02 walks through the differences in detail.