On a batch of 17 new phones rolled out about 30 days ago, we have had 3 iPhone users report problems that were tracked down to faulty/failed SIMs and one 'regular' SIM has failed in another phone - so I'm rather wishing SIM cards wouldn't keep dying!
SIM Cards Must Die
41–50 of 141 posts
Re: SIM Cards Must Die
#42When you go to select the list of carriers on your phone as you propose, your phone will only be able to show carriers for which it can tranceive. It's not like they all share the same spectrum.
Furthermore, switching numbers and accounts, and transferring them to other phones could be made more complex.
Re: SIM Cards Must Die
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Is there actually any benefit to CDMA?
Yeah... Being ancient technology, the carriers have had more time to put towers everywhere, thus giving better coverage.
However, you still can't do data and voice at the same time.
Re: SIM Cards Must Die
#44There's actually a really good reason why this isn't coming anytime soon to the US: number portability is not entirely centralized, and the porting system is built to run in batch, not in realtime.
So if, say, Sprint issues a portability request to Syniverse (the mapping platform provider) so that they can have your number from Verizon, Syniverse puts that request in the next batch. Then the batch gets passed to VZ for evaluation for things like whether you still owe them money. If you're good to go, VZ kills your DN (that's your number and the associated SVC mapping), and your VZ service goes dead. Then they pass your record back to Syniverse who then passes the thumbs-up and the number to Sprint who sets up a new DN to your new service (and presumably your new handset if you're going from one locked-in CDMA net to another).
That's a really watered down, 4am version of what happens. But the upshot of all of it is that if it worked like WiFi SSID switching, every time you switched, you'd probably lose service for awhile. If all things work for the good, the switch can take like 10 minutes. I'm sure they could get it down to 1 or 2. But probably not 0.
Here's the punchline... the SIM card in GSM was specifically designed to OBVIATE the need for all that (also to act as an encryption key, but that got hacked years ago). The SIM is supposed to authenticate you to a particular DN and link you back to a billing record at your primary carrier. The theory was that every carrier would create roaming treaties, and you'd just wander from network to network, oblivious to whose actual network you were on. And your primary carrier would sort it out on the backend. And in many places, it actually pretty much works that way. You can carry 3 or 4 cards and swap carriers and numbers based on the plan you want to use. Because the phones aren't locked to a single carrier's cards.
A good example of this is that in the T-Mobile / AT&T breakup, they came to an agreement to allow cross-network roaming sometime late this year. So if you're a TMo subscriber, but you've got an AT&T signal, even in a TMo service area, you'll just ride AT&T instead.
So essentially the reason it doesn't already work this way is because A) CDMA is so popular in the US, and CDMA really requires the rigorous porting process, and B) the carriers who do support it (AT&T, TMo and Sprint on their now-dwindling GSM net) have been jerks about it for years. It's a business decision, not a technical one.
Re: SIM Cards Must Die
#45I read that iPads in France let you choose the 3G network during the first boot. Sounds silimar to what the author is proposing. If anybody has a screenshot of that screen, please share. http://store.apple.com/fr/browse/home/shop_ipad/family/ipad/...
Re: SIM Cards Must Die
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Each phone could have a built in key for signing. You could tell operators to not allow any other phone except for yours (which has this key) to access your account. Not a problem.
SIM cards are exactly this, with the added benefit of (almost) two factor authentication. If I have my SIM card, I can be reasonably confident that you can't pretend to be me. If phones managed keys, I'd be more worried that you've managed to copy my key somehow.
Re: SIM Cards Must Die
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there actually any benefit to CDMA?
It doesn't interfere with your speakers when transmitting? I'm not sure if this is still the case, but my old AT&T phone would cause my speakers to go haywire when I was about to receive a phone call. Never experienced that with Verizon or Sprint.
I think that's only the case for 2G (GSM, GPRS, EDGE). UMTS (3G) doesn't do that.
Re: SIM Cards Must Die
#48The industry has been working on software SIMs for some time. I had a telco talking to me about the initiative years ago.
The problem is that the soft SIM provisioning process will become like DRM for phones. The users desires and the service providers desires are fundamentally misaligned here. Users want to be able to choose freely from the best tariffs available to them in a given location. Service providers want to lock people in and keep roaming expensive.
Re: SIM Cards Must Die
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
CDMA phones come with an ESN (http://www.mobileburn.com/definition.jsp?term=ESN). It's basically like your SIM card number, except that it doesn't change.
CDMA carriers can activate a phone not sold by them by ESN. However, some carriers have decided that they would prefer you to buy a handset from them and refuse to activate devices that weren't sold by them. Sprint has a policy of not activating any ESN that comes from a phone they didn't sell. I'm not sure if that applies to the iPhone since a non-Sprint iPhone would really be the same device. Anyway, unlike SIM cards, you're more at the mercy of whether a carrier will activate it or not.
Re: SIM Cards Must Die
#50In 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.
Old neighbours often ask me to set up their new (non-smart) phones for them, SIM cards make the process of moving contacts so much easier.