8 ms·

I'm afraid if we kill SIM cards, the opposite will happen: your phone will be locked to one network, and switching networks means switching hardware (beyond jus

by PanMan 15y ago

I'm afraid if we kill SIM cards, the opposite will happen: your phone will be locked to one network, and switching networks means switching hardware (beyond just the sim). I really like that while traveling I can just buy a local sim, put it in my own phone, and use it. That would only work in these wireframes if all operators would agree to support this. Which I think they won't.

LeafStorm 15y ago
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.)
- Arubis 15y ago
  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.
  - pmjordan 15y ago
    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?
    - kalleboo 15y ago
      > does the CDMA module only work if you bought the phone from a CDMA network operator Yes. They program it with your subscriber number at purchase. Technically they could reprogram phones not sold by them with your subscriber number, but they don't (to force you to give them more money). There does exist a CDMA version of the SIM (RUIM? something like that). China Mobile uses it, and I think au/kddi do too. American carriers do not.
      - Drbble 15y ago
        I am surprised they allows that. That sounds like a far more obvious antitrust violation than putting an IE icon on the Windows desktop.
        a3camero 15y ago
        It gets worse in Canada. They carrier lock the phones to the brands. There's a big phone company called Telus that has a brand called Koodo and you can't swap phones between them even though it's actually the same network. All the joys of fake competition with none of the compatibility!
    - zred 15y ago
      CDMA phones come with an ESN (http://www.mobileburn.com/definition.jsp?term=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.
      - sklnd 15y ago
        ESN is equivalent to IMEI in GSM/UMTS networks. IMEI is tied to equipment, and never changes, just like ESN. CDMA networks use IMSI to identify subscribers (as opposed to the equipment serial number) just like GSM/UMTS. IMSIs are provisioned on to the phone by the carrier with special software supplied by the phone manufacturer, instead of being supplied to the phone by the phone asking the SIM for it. There's no technical reason why CDMA networks can't use a removable card to store subscriber data, and indeed there are a few standards for doing so (RUIM and CSIM) and a few carriers that use them.
  - antihero 15y ago
    Is there actually any benefit to CDMA?
    - capecodcarl 15y ago
      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.
      - rb2k_ 15y ago
        I think that's only the case for 2G (GSM, GPRS, EDGE). UMTS (3G) doesn't do that.
    - nnnnni 15y ago
      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.
      - identity86 15y ago
        I'm been curious about this, it seems they can can do it over SVDO, but for some reason only HTC seems to actually support this.. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1012752 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1012752.
      - jonknee 15y ago
        What are you talking about? GSM dates back to the mid 1980s and the first spec was published in 1991. The first mobile phone CDMA standard didn't come into play until 1995. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IS-95 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IS-95
    - zred 15y ago
      Depending on how you look at it, there can be many benefits, but as with most technologies, they're contextual. CDMA uses 1.25MHz channels. That can be limiting in some ways, but advantageous in others. When deploying UMTS channels, AT&T or T-Mobile would need to clear out 10MHz of spectrum. Back when 3G wireless was first getting off the ground, it was decently common for a carrier to have below 30MHz in a market. To give two examples, Sprint and T-Mobile both had an average spectrum depth of around 25MHz. Sprint was able to get out of the gate fast on 3G requiring only 2.5MHz (around 10% of their spectrum) to deploy. T-Mobile had to wait until it purchased new AWS spectrum years later. The UMTS channels would have taken up 40% of their spectrum. So, it was difficult to clear out enough space to deploy UMTS. You were basically taking a third to half of your spectrum and making it unavailable for current customers. Then, as you launched the network and started selling 3G devices, customers would start moving their usage to the new technology. EV-DO (the CDMA data standard), on the other hand, only required a carrier to free up 2.5MHz of spectrum to deploy 3G. Even today, it can be an issue. As the number of GSM customers dwindle, AT&T and T-Mobile want to allocate more spectrum to UMTS. However, they can only do that in 10MHz chunks. They don't get to say, "ah, there's 3MHz that we should move to UMTS". Likewise, because UMTS does voice and data, it meant that carriers had to install SS7 and mobile switching gear to handle the voice. EV-DO was an all-IP network that wasn't going to handle voice. While that could be a disadvantage in some ways, it provided the benefit of being easier to deploy in terms of equipment. Taking that a step further, the lack of a voice requirement for EV-DO meant that they could launch a network in a much more piecemeal fashion. If one launched a UMTS network with lots of holes, call quality would be poor. Sure, calls could hand-off to GSM, but they might have a "1-bar" UMTS signal with crummy call quality while GSM users got excellent quality. Back then, if data didn't work or was delayed a bit, it didn't matter that much. People used data infrequently compared to calling and call reliability is what people paid for. It should also be noted that when EV-DO was first deployed, it was faster than UMTS. UMTS R99 had a peak data rate of 384kbps, well below the 2.4Mbps of EV-DO Rel 0. Now, the wider band of UMTS made it more future-proof, but initially EV-DO looked very good. To be fair to UMTS, I could talk about problems with CDMA as well. CDMA offered a bit more of a practical, easier transition to 3G for carriers. It's narrower channels made it easy to carve out spectrum, the fact that there wasn't a voice component meant that less equipment was needed and it didn't require the same initial reliability, etc.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
lwhi 15y ago
Yep, a SIM card gives freedom from networks and the ability to change numbers easily and use pay as you go services when travelling. There's no way killing SIM cards would be a good thing.
- kamjam 15y ago
  This and Panmans comments were my first thought when I read that piece. I like the SIM card. When I went backpacking round the world I was able to pick up a pay as you go SIM card from a local store in any country, load it with credit and pop it in my phone and I'm all good to go. None of this sharing information from my phone business. You don't need to know my identity or payment information. I don't want the hassle of calling customer services in a country where they speak very little english because all of a sudden I have had £50 taken from my account due to some set up issue or whatever. Anyway, as panman says, i think it will cause the opposite effect. Didn't the original GSM phones work in a similar way, with no SIM and some sort of mapping to a phone number at the carrier end? What is the likelihood that the carriers would remove the ability to change carriers, pretty high i'd say.
  - CaptainZapp 15y ago
    Going out on a limb here, but Didn't the original GSM phones work in a similar way, with no SIM and some sort of mapping to a phone number at the carrier end? As far as I know (and recall), SIM was always part of the GSM specifications. The first SIMs where credit card sized. Later generations where still credit card sized, but with a perforated breakout for the SIM as we know it (mostly). The predecessor system (analogue mobile) didn't use SIM.
    - kamjam 15y ago
      Ahhh, it was the old analogue phones I was thinking of. I never had one, my brother did though. I remember the big sim card and the perforated ones too :)
      - dfox 15y ago
otoburb 15y ago
>>>your phone will be locked to one network This is exactly what happened with the original analog and CDMA networks. Most carriers these days have converged on the HSPA and LTE standards which thankfully support SIM cards. There's no technical reason why CDMA networks couldn't have supported SIM cards in their phones, but it was just never done. As evidenced by the overwhelming popularity of SIM cards, this particular battle has been won by almost unanimous decision in favour of the cards. Only a few bastions of the original CDMA networks still don't natively support SIM cards (e.g. South Korea). But on the whole, it was already decided that SIM cards are here to stay since carriers demonstrated that without them, they are more prone to higher switching costs.
- sklnd 15y ago
  > There's no technical reason why CDMA networks couldn't have supported SIM cards in their phones, but it was just never done. Indeed. RUIMs (and CSIMs) were standardized for CDMA, but carriers in the americas never bothered with them. A fair number of asian countries have CDMA carriers that use the, though.
jlindenbaum 15y ago
This assumes you have a phone that isn't already SIM-locked, like most of them are when purchased from carriers.
- dubya 15y ago
  I will definitely be shopping more carefully the next time I purchase a phone. I have an AT&T iphone 4. It works well, I have good coverage, and it can be used internationally, but AT&T will never unlock a phone, even after your contract is up, or if you are traveling overseas. I was in Europe for a week, and as soon as the phone connects, I get a text from AT&T saying that the data rate is $19.97/MB! Data was off, because I knew it would be a rip-off, but I had not guessed to what extent.
  - CrazedGeek 15y ago
    That's not strictly true -- they just won't unlock an iPhone. http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=55002&cv=820#fbid=PquiPi1cnBX http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=55002&cv=820...
    - dubya 15y ago
      You're right of course. Somehow that doesn't make me any happier.

by PanMan 15y ago

LeafStorm 15y ago

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.)

Arubis 15y ago
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.
- pmjordan 15y ago
  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?
  - kalleboo 15y ago
    > does the CDMA module only work if you bought the phone from a CDMA network operator Yes. They program it with your subscriber number at purchase. Technically they could reprogram phones not sold by them with your subscriber number, but they don't (to force you to give them more money). There does exist a CDMA version of the SIM (RUIM? something like that). China Mobile uses it, and I think au/kddi do too. American carriers do not.
    - Drbble 15y ago
      I am surprised they allows that. That sounds like a far more obvious antitrust violation than putting an IE icon on the Windows desktop.
      - a3camero 15y ago
        It gets worse in Canada. They carrier lock the phones to the brands. There's a big phone company called Telus that has a brand called Koodo and you can't swap phones between them even though it's actually the same network. All the joys of fake competition with none of the compatibility!
  - zred 15y ago
    CDMA phones come with an ESN (http://www.mobileburn.com/definition.jsp?term=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.
    - sklnd 15y ago
      ESN is equivalent to IMEI in GSM/UMTS networks. IMEI is tied to equipment, and never changes, just like ESN. CDMA networks use IMSI to identify subscribers (as opposed to the equipment serial number) just like GSM/UMTS. IMSIs are provisioned on to the phone by the carrier with special software supplied by the phone manufacturer, instead of being supplied to the phone by the phone asking the SIM for it. There's no technical reason why CDMA networks can't use a removable card to store subscriber data, and indeed there are a few standards for doing so (RUIM and CSIM) and a few carriers that use them.
- antihero 15y ago
  Is there actually any benefit to CDMA?
  - capecodcarl 15y ago
    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.
    - rb2k_ 15y ago
      I think that's only the case for 2G (GSM, GPRS, EDGE). UMTS (3G) doesn't do that.
  - nnnnni 15y ago
    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.
    - identity86 15y ago
      I'm been curious about this, it seems they can can do it over SVDO, but for some reason only HTC seems to actually support this.. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1012752 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1012752.
    - jonknee 15y ago
      What are you talking about? GSM dates back to the mid 1980s and the first spec was published in 1991. The first mobile phone CDMA standard didn't come into play until 1995. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IS-95 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IS-95
  - zred 15y ago
    Depending on how you look at it, there can be many benefits, but as with most technologies, they're contextual. CDMA uses 1.25MHz channels. That can be limiting in some ways, but advantageous in others. When deploying UMTS channels, AT&T or T-Mobile would need to clear out 10MHz of spectrum. Back when 3G wireless was first getting off the ground, it was decently common for a carrier to have below 30MHz in a market. To give two examples, Sprint and T-Mobile both had an average spectrum depth of around 25MHz. Sprint was able to get out of the gate fast on 3G requiring only 2.5MHz (around 10% of their spectrum) to deploy. T-Mobile had to wait until it purchased new AWS spectrum years later. The UMTS channels would have taken up 40% of their spectrum. So, it was difficult to clear out enough space to deploy UMTS. You were basically taking a third to half of your spectrum and making it unavailable for current customers. Then, as you launched the network and started selling 3G devices, customers would start moving their usage to the new technology. EV-DO (the CDMA data standard), on the other hand, only required a carrier to free up 2.5MHz of spectrum to deploy 3G. Even today, it can be an issue. As the number of GSM customers dwindle, AT&T and T-Mobile want to allocate more spectrum to UMTS. However, they can only do that in 10MHz chunks. They don't get to say, "ah, there's 3MHz that we should move to UMTS". Likewise, because UMTS does voice and data, it meant that carriers had to install SS7 and mobile switching gear to handle the voice. EV-DO was an all-IP network that wasn't going to handle voice. While that could be a disadvantage in some ways, it provided the benefit of being easier to deploy in terms of equipment. Taking that a step further, the lack of a voice requirement for EV-DO meant that they could launch a network in a much more piecemeal fashion. If one launched a UMTS network with lots of holes, call quality would be poor. Sure, calls could hand-off to GSM, but they might have a "1-bar" UMTS signal with crummy call quality while GSM users got excellent quality. Back then, if data didn't work or was delayed a bit, it didn't matter that much. People used data infrequently compared to calling and call reliability is what people paid for. It should also be noted that when EV-DO was first deployed, it was faster than UMTS. UMTS R99 had a peak data rate of 384kbps, well below the 2.4Mbps of EV-DO Rel 0. Now, the wider band of UMTS made it more future-proof, but initially EV-DO looked very good. To be fair to UMTS, I could talk about problems with CDMA as well. CDMA offered a bit more of a practical, easier transition to 3G for carriers. It's narrower channels made it easy to carve out spectrum, the fact that there wasn't a voice component meant that less equipment was needed and it didn't require the same initial reliability, etc.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

lwhi 15y ago

Yep, a SIM card gives freedom from networks and the ability to change numbers easily and use pay as you go services when travelling. There's no way killing SIM cards would be a good thing.

kamjam 15y ago
This and Panmans comments were my first thought when I read that piece. I like the SIM card. When I went backpacking round the world I was able to pick up a pay as you go SIM card from a local store in any country, load it with credit and pop it in my phone and I'm all good to go. None of this sharing information from my phone business. You don't need to know my identity or payment information. I don't want the hassle of calling customer services in a country where they speak very little english because all of a sudden I have had £50 taken from my account due to some set up issue or whatever. Anyway, as panman says, i think it will cause the opposite effect. Didn't the original GSM phones work in a similar way, with no SIM and some sort of mapping to a phone number at the carrier end? What is the likelihood that the carriers would remove the ability to change carriers, pretty high i'd say.
- CaptainZapp 15y ago
  Going out on a limb here, but Didn't the original GSM phones work in a similar way, with no SIM and some sort of mapping to a phone number at the carrier end? As far as I know (and recall), SIM was always part of the GSM specifications. The first SIMs where credit card sized. Later generations where still credit card sized, but with a perforated breakout for the SIM as we know it (mostly). The predecessor system (analogue mobile) didn't use SIM.
  - kamjam 15y ago
    Ahhh, it was the old analogue phones I was thinking of. I never had one, my brother did though. I remember the big sim card and the perforated ones too :)
    - dfox 15y ago

otoburb 15y ago

>>>your phone will be locked to one network This is exactly what happened with the original analog and CDMA networks. Most carriers these days have converged on the HSPA and LTE standards which thankfully support SIM cards. There's no technical reason why CDMA networks couldn't have supported SIM cards in their phones, but it was just never done. As evidenced by the overwhelming popularity of SIM cards, this particular battle has been won by almost unanimous decision in favour of the cards. Only a few bastions of the original CDMA networks still don't natively support SIM cards (e.g. South Korea). But on the whole, it was already decided that SIM cards are here to stay since carriers demonstrated that without them, they are more prone to higher switching costs.

sklnd 15y ago
> There's no technical reason why CDMA networks couldn't have supported SIM cards in their phones, but it was just never done. Indeed. RUIMs (and CSIMs) were standardized for CDMA, but carriers in the americas never bothered with them. A fair number of asian countries have CDMA carriers that use the, though.

jlindenbaum 15y ago

This assumes you have a phone that isn't already SIM-locked, like most of them are when purchased from carriers.

dubya 15y ago
I will definitely be shopping more carefully the next time I purchase a phone. I have an AT&T iphone 4. It works well, I have good coverage, and it can be used internationally, but AT&T will never unlock a phone, even after your contract is up, or if you are traveling overseas. I was in Europe for a week, and as soon as the phone connects, I get a text from AT&T saying that the data rate is $19.97/MB! Data was off, because I knew it would be a rip-off, but I had not guessed to what extent.
- CrazedGeek 15y ago
  That's not strictly true -- they just won't unlock an iPhone. http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=55002&cv=820#fbid=PquiPi1cnBX http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=55002&cv=820...
  - dubya 15y ago
    You're right of course. Somehow that doesn't make me any happier.