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Comment by lwhi | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

I find the opposite version of that quite useful too - swapping SIMs lets me change my phone hardware out independently of my carrier/phonenumber. I can (with a $2 microsim adaptor) switch between an iPhone, a Galaxy SII, and occasionally a tiny not-very-"smart"phone-but-perfectly-adequate-for-voice-and-text Huewei device. Phone calls and text messages just arrive at whatever device I've got my SIM in.

Yes, totally agree with this. There is a comment further down here that someone says they swap out their SIM into an old dumB phone when out biking since if they fall the phone is less likely break. I've had the screen crack on a phone when it was in my back pocket and I sat on something. It's also handy swapping out to those basic dumb phones when you have no recharge facilities available, like when you are at a music festival, or out camping for the weekend.

Agree with the general sentiment. The down side is something I'm waiting (hoping) for someone to fix. If I get a text message on one phone I can't get to it when I put the SIM into my other phone.

It'd be awesome if there was an operator-netural, handset-neutral, multi-platform and secure cloud-based SMS sync service.

Actually most older phones (first generation gsm-phones) stored sms (and contact-list) directly on the sim-card.

Swapping the sim into another phone and you would have everything accessible. Some phones had their own memory also so you could choose where to store it or it would revert to SIM when phone memory was out.

Problem was that the memory on the SIM was incredibly slow and small and had no support for advanced contact list management(like multiple numbers per name), so now every phone has its own storage.

Yes, my Nokia 8850 had no internal storage and therefore i could only hold 10 messages on the SIM. The later SIM's had more memory and could store 20 messages!

Seems strange having a phone that even stores them individually and doesn't group my contact these days!

Google Voice.

Yeah, if it worked outside the US I'd be on it in a flash. I suspect Twilio will have local-to-me-in-Australia endpoints before Google Voice does, so a hand-rolled Twilio solution is probably in my future.

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.

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 :)

And while NMT phones didn't use easily (and user) replaceable SIM, they were paired to operator/number not by some database but by contents of replaceable EPROM chip in them. SIM cards were introduced not to make changing carriers possible, but easier and also more secure (NMT phones could be cloned without direct access to phone, only by eavesdropping on signaling channel).

Americans don't know that because their phone companies forbid that practice. AT&T doesn't even bother to move your SIM card from your old iPhone to your new iPhone when you upgrade, they just give you a new card.

When I switched from my old MotoRAZR to the iPhone, I used the same SIM. Just popped it in and I was good to go. My SIM still has the Cingular logo on it!

That's not correct. I've used my phone on multiple carriers just by swapping the SIM card - and when I upgraded my phone, they used my existing SIM card.

Really, they give you a new sim on upgrade? I can understand this if you are upgrading TO an iPhone since you need a micro SIM, but rather pointless otherwise.

I think I've had the same SIM card for about 6-7 years now!

My experience with AT&T is they've always given me a new SIM, when buying a new phone from them, but I've also bought raw sim's from them with no problem.

I think they just write the "New Phone" script for their employees, with a new sim, so the steps,are always the same. Less chances to mess things up when there are less choices.

Older sims dont have 3G capabilities either. (Not sure why)

Older sims are missing the USIM "applet" that contains the data necessary to negotiate with UMTS networks.

This is something weird that I've discovered too.

I am now on T-Mobile (from AT&T) and there are all sorts of T-Mobile features that may or may not work depending on what SIM card you have in your phone. And if they don't work you have to get a new SIM card (that is not guaranteed not to disable other features.)

What!? That seems to be the weirdest thing ever. What is going on?

Mine is defo new enough that it supports that! Anyone know if you need a new sim card to support 4G services?

IIRC, yes, at least for AT&T's LTE -- HSDPA (and HSUPA, HSPA+, etc) will work just fine with a 3G SIM (since they're just souped-up 3G).

And complete anonymity. Most people don't care about this, but some of us do, sometimes. You buy a pay as you go sim card for £10, pay with cash, and toss it a week or month later.

Can you still do this? I've tried in a few countries but had to register online with all my personal details before the card got activated.

You can in the UK.

Retailers are supposed to take your name and address when buying a PAYG phone/SIM with cash. I've seen a Carphone Warehouse refuse a sale because of it - although they also don't verify the information you give them, so you could just lie.

You have to replace the handset too; calls are likable both to sim and equipment. Buying a prepaid handset with CDMA account esn built in is just as anonymous.

This is currently hung on the SIM. Couldn't it just as well be hung on a web service, or paypal account? Why make it physical? This screams for virtualization.

The nice thing about having a physical object is that I can hand it easily to someone else, I can destroy it, I can save it, and I can do all these things when my service provider has disconnected me.

Same with an independent cloud service.

There HAS to be a better way than carrying around a legacy device.

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