eSIM for iPhone XS, XS MAX and XR

Supposedly available today since 12.1.1 is out.

Published a help page even: https://www.att.com/esupport/article.html#!/wireless/KM1288682

Got mine activated last night. Went into a store and they had the blue eSIM cards. Took a little for the CSR to understand what I wanted, but 15 minutes later I had AT&T on the eSIM and T-Mobile on the physical SIM. Quite happy just having one phone!

So my luck hasn't been as good.  This morning I "pried" an ESIM card out of ATT.  I went home with the phone unactivated and basically on my own and can't get my old line attached to the new ESIM.  I went through the following steps:

1. Upgraded IOS to 12.1.1.
2. Purchased ESIM, activated ESIM by going to Settings/Cellular/Add Cellular Plan;
3. Successfully scanned QR Code, phone goes to dual SIM mode but plan doesn’t transfer, there are no options to do so;
4. Tried to do it online (no options);
5. Called Customer Support, was transferred to advanced tech support and provided them UPC and ICCID;
6. Also provided her with ICCID on old SIM (89XXXXXXXXXXXXX)
7. Deactivated and reactivated plan without luck;
8. Why Advanced Tech Support Said:
9. Said this was a bad QR Code;
10. Could not activate on these number;
11. Store should activate ESIM in system;
12. Notated the file about what store should do

I am on my way to the store.  What do you want to bet that it is a tech support issue?

I guess I spoke too soon. Couldn't figure out how to get iMessages working on my second number. Working fine on my primary number, and it was SMS (green) on my second number. Seeing that others said you could have two phone numbers on iMessages, I called Apple. Apple went through a bunch of stuff over the course of an hour and twenty minutes......to not have iMessages working at all. Not on my phone number and not on my Apple ID. Whatever they did removed the number that was working from my iPads and well. So now I have no iMessages on any Apple device. It's been kicked up to Apple Engineering, where they say it will take up to 72 hours to hear from someone. Considering it is Friday, my guess is Wednesday before I may possibly have iMessages again.

While it works, I'm not sure all this is ready for prime time.

If you have no physical SIM and an eSIM, there is not a No SIM message....since there is a SIM. You can have either line be primary or secondary and have either line be the one used for data.

Do you have to go to AT&T store to get eSIM?  Since it is just a QR code (am I right?), could it be received via email or sent by AT&T to the phone directly? 

Got the IOS 12.1.1 update yesterday morning, so I headed to my local AT&T store at lunchtime.  The associate knew exactly what I wanted, but I was the first person to come in and ask so it was a learning experience for both of us.  Took about twenty minutes because he walked through the process very deliberately since it was his first time, but it all went without a hitch and my number was seamlessly transferred from the physical SIM to the eSIM.  When I got home, I popped out the AT&T SIM, inserted my Telstra Australia SIM, and now I have both my US and Australian numbers active.  Just for the exercise, I have manually selected T-Mobile on the Aussie SIM, so I can see the comparative strength of the two networks wherever I go.