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SIM Cards Must Die

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Re: SIM Cards Must Die

#21

Post by stoolpigeon »

sepposade wrote: post #7
Loic wrote: post #2

I suppose you live in the US, with only a couple of huge carriers. I live in Germany, I am French, travelling a lot between France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland. I am so happy with the SIM card system. I can switch carrier if I want easily (swap the SIM card) but especially: I do not care when I travel which carrier my phone will pick. It will work, nothing to do and I know what it will cost in advan…

But you will pay outrageous roaming charges. Why should you? Would you accept roaming charges on Wi-Fi access when abroad?

They wont pay roaming because they swap sims - 4th sentence.

Re: SIM Cards Must Die

#23

Post by c1sc0 »

stoolpigeon wrote: post #6
Loic wrote: post #2

I suppose you live in the US, with only a couple of huge carriers. I live in Germany, I am French, travelling a lot between France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland. I am so happy with the SIM card system. I can switch carrier if I want easily (swap the SIM card) but especially: I do not care when I travel which carrier my phone will pick. It will work, nothing to do and I know what it will cost in advan…

This I travel enough to see the benefits as well. Phones that handle multiple sim cards are also nice. I also view it as an added layer of security. My phone can't be connected to the network until the pin for my sim is entered. The ability to save data to the sim is also a nice feature. I don't really see any reason for them to go away.

I'd love to see a pocket hub that will take multiple sims & route my calls transparently over WiFi/VoIP.

Re: SIM Cards Must Die

#24

Post by masklinn »

dagw wrote: post #10

I don't see what sim cards have to do with locking in customers. Even in his hypothetical sim-free future there is nothing preventing the carrier from saying "if you select this plan you must pay us $59/month for the next 2 years before we let you cancel".

Indeed, as can be seen with Verizon (which does not use SIM cards on account of being a CDMA network)

And the other way around, nothing in SIM cards mandate lock-ins, I bought my phone unlocked (the previous one was bought simlocked and I'd made use of my legal rights to get it unlocked 6 months into my contract) and my current ISP is pre-paid, no-contract on SIMs. I ordered a SIM from them, popped it into my phone and I fill the account when I need to.

And when I travel across europe, I can trivially get cheapo pre-paid SIMs and put them in if I need to. There is no lock anywhere.

In fact, I'd expect far more lock-in with TFA's solution: my current indie ISP never managed to get a reply from Apple when they tried to get their IPCC into iTunes (so user would not have to enter e.g. data network info by hand), Apple only deals with big ISPs, not with virtual operators for a few tens of thousand clients in minor euro countries.

Re: SIM Cards Must Die

#25

Post by stoolpigeon »

ragmondo wrote: post #20

Hmmmm. Here's my post from 9 days ago : http://ragmondocom.appspot.com/2012/03/Who-needs-SIM-cards - I propose virtual downloadable SIM cards....

NLIps says it below - and I agree - the problem I see with this 'virtual sim' is that it is less secure.

Re: SIM Cards Must Die

#26

Post by ericmoritz »

I have an old Moto Razr that I put my SIM card in when I go on long bike rides in the boonies. The battery lasts longer and if I fall I don't have to worry about crushing my smartphone.

Re: SIM Cards Must Die

#27

Post by pmjordan »

Arubis wrote: post #11
LeafStorm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much this. In fact, it's already happening to some extent -- most Verizon phones are sold without a SIM. (At least, not a user-accessible SIM.)

That's been the case for ages because Verizon is a CDMA network, not GSM -- GSM takes SIM cards, while CDMA does not. Different tech. This is likely to shift as V rolls out LTE, which DOES take SIM cards. So we're actually likely to see more intercompatibility as things progress. Except, of course, that everything's still likely to be carrier-locked.

Pardon my ignorance, but being in Europe means I've never used a 2G CDMA network - the iPhone4S supposedly works for both GSM and CDMA; if you don't get a SIM, does the CDMA module only work if you bought the phone from a CDMA network operator, and not if you bought it from Apple directly?

Re: SIM Cards Must Die

#28

Post by masklinn »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #16

In principle, I love this idea. In practice, without a great deal of work, this will make it much more difficult to switch between phones , which typically occurs more often than switching carriers. Right now, you can pull out a SIM and put it in a new phone, and you can immediately use the phone number with that new phone, without any interaction with the carrier.

> In practice, without a great deal of work, this will make it much more difficult to switch between phones, which typically occurs more often than switching carriers.

In practice it also makes it much more difficult to switch between carriers (which is in fact much more common than switching between phones when you travel across Europe or south-east asia): to switch carriers right now, I just need to replace my current SIM with a new one (assuming the phone is not SIM-locked, which it is not).

Re: SIM Cards Must Die

#29

Post by yread »

sepposade wrote: post #7
Loic wrote: post #2

I suppose you live in the US, with only a couple of huge carriers. I live in Germany, I am French, travelling a lot between France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland. I am so happy with the SIM card system. I can switch carrier if I want easily (swap the SIM card) but especially: I do not care when I travel which carrier my phone will pick. It will work, nothing to do and I know what it will cost in advan…

But you will pay outrageous roaming charges. Why should you? Would you accept roaming charges on Wi-Fi access when abroad?

Why would you pay roaming charges when you swap sim card for a local one?

Besides it's not that bad in EU with roaming anymore http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/roaming/t...

Also, some operators allow to purchase "european data" - ie. unlimited european data roaming for cheap.

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