The big reason they were popular in India was that one had to pay for long-distance calls (yes, even on mobile) if you called interstate (or more accurately, in

The big reason they were popular in India was that one had to pay for long-distance calls (yes, even on mobile) if you called interstate (or more accurately, inter-telecom “circle”), and many people had lives that spanned two or more circles. The other crucial reason is that it was near-free to have as many prepaid SIMs as you wanted, you paid only if you used it to make calls (receive was, and remains, free, like in Europe). And VoIP numbers aren’t allowed in India. These days, all the carriers have national licenses, there’s no long-distance charges, and you have to pay a nontrivial sum (nontrivial unless you’re a relatively rich Indian) every month to keep your SIM active. Whether you make calls with it or not. This has been a slow, “boil the frog” change, and the relatively extremely well-off Indians on HN will probably be the last to notice, but the need to have multiple SIMs in India isn’t as strong as it was in the 2000s.