> American telecom provider Who said anything about American telecom providers specifically? > If you have the ability to distribute keys directly, asymmetric

> American telecom provider Who said anything about American telecom providers specifically? > If you have the ability to distribute keys directly, asymmetric cryptography adds complexity without much payoff. It's hard for me to believe that a symmetric key, touched by at least three systems (SIM card, operator HSS, SIM manufacturer), the former two of which can't be completely airgapped for obvious reasons, with no ability to rekey, is more secure than a key that is physically unable to leave a single device. With a TLS-like system, you'd have to somehow hack every single SIM card to get anywhere. Hacking the manufacturer wouldn't help unless you could make them flash custom software that would exfiltrate the keys, and the consequences of an operator hack could be contained by revoking an immediate certificate and generating a new one, presumably from the operator's root cert, sitting somewhere safe in a completely airgapped HSM.