111–120 of 191 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But why? Multi-SIM phones are cheap and easy to come by.
Not in the US
I've already taken advantage of it being unlocked by switching carriers (saved some bucks) when I saw the prices on one were now better than what I'd been paying.
'eSIM' is on the way to replace sim cards. The biggest challenge of 'downloading a sim card' to a secure enclave on a phone is of course security. The GSMA and members (i.e. telcos) have been working on secure remote provisioning. I think it'll take a while for the technology to make it in to consumer devices, though it's likely to be used in IoT relatively soon. It takes a long time to spec these things up collabora…
Actually there is at least one company already offering Remote-Sim-Provisioning. https://medium.com/@ComfortWay_Glob/cwsim-freedom-of-connect... They are selling local data-plans abroad without switching the SIM card by implementing RSP. Calls are coming in 2017, also promising a portable phone number later that year.
In the case of a true eSIM, there is no sim card at all, it's stored on the device it's self with a lower level bootstraping profile (i.e. not an alternative pre-programmed carrier)
The actual reason it's still a thing is because changing how thousands of network operators work in over 200 countries is quite difficult to coordinate. Even Apple tried to push a soft-SIM and couldn't get it going. But I'm glad for it, because the foresight of the designers of GSM to put your private key in a smartcard has absolutely improved consumer choice worldwide. I can buy an unlocked phone, travel to any coun…
Personally I really appreciate the fact that providers have SIMs. Verizon (major network in the USA) used to NOT have SIMs, and it was a huge pain to change phones out. Now it's as simple as swapping out the SIM. I hear you that it should be doable in software, although I'd argue that if anything you should still need the SIM as a sort of second factor. (Otherwise you run the risk of people stealing your phone accoun…
without that, i would have to either buy a local phone or deal with how expensive my carrier makes to use internet outside my own country.
As others have pointed out, SIM cards are basically smart cards. There's PKI, private keys, the ability to perform mutual authentication (although that's not usually done, at least in .us), and much more. Honestly, I wish their use would expand into other areas of our lives -- replacing username and password combinations for various devices (working for an ISP, home routers are one good example). As much as I'm again…
Sadly, encrypting e-mail will break all current anti-spam methods.
Now that I think about, just the encryption itself will increase the computational cost of sending out spam e-mails. While today a spammer can blast out an e-mail to 100 recipients very quickly, it'll take a fair bit longer to do once the spammer has to query and retrieve 100 public keys (one for each of the recipients) and then encrypt the e-mail 100 times over.
Xiaomi offers a Virtual SIM for years now. [0] [0]: http://en.miui.com/thread-146080-1-1.html
https://www.knowroaming.com/softsim/
KnowRoaming is a Canadian MVNO which now owns a full American MNO located out of Nevada and licensed out of Missouri for spectrum.
Why would I want a SIM card with one IMSI on it when I can have a SIM card with up to 20 IMSIs from various networks all around the world, or even better the ability to constantly swap and trade IMSIs from various networks, new connectivity set everyday. A global community calls for global connectivity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
another interesting company in this space is FlexiroamX, they have a super flat sim that sticks on top of your existing sim. It lets you soft-switch the SIM using a "SIM Application" (like mentioned elsewhere in the thread) - appears as if it unplugs and replugs to the phone. See picture of the process here: https://twitter.com/lathiat/status/758979125751054336 Works fantastically and gives me $30/GB data in pretty m…
>$30/GB Some European operators still have cheaper roaming data plans
SIM: Subscriber Identity Module almost says it all, on top of that a SIM can store your contacts (up to a certain number). The SIM is what separates your identity from the hardware of the phone (which has its own identity called 'IMEI'). A 'software solution' would need a carrier, that carrier IS the SIM. Another nice benefit of having the SIM device is that it makes it much harder to 'clone' a subscriber ID, somethi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because username and password is a disaster for security. It's sole purpose is let ANY guy ANY where on the planet connect to your account. SIM cards are cryptographic hardware tokens. They are much more secure than passwords. In fact, they do need a password as well on top of the hardware token, that's the 'PIN code' you have to enter when you (re)boot your phone.
In practice SIM cards don't give you much physical security anyway. I transferred my mobile phone number etc over to a new SIM card the other week and all I needed was name, address, DOB and proof of ID... of course my network didnt have any of these on file yet, so I had to first tell them these details, and then show ID to verify that I was who I had just told them that I should be. Yeah... this is the state of con…