The Netherlands paves the way for carrier-free SIM cards | Hacker News Reader

The Netherlands paves the way for carrier-free SIM cards

news.cnet.com

53 pointslelf27 comments

This is a positive step for everyone. The present carrier practice reminds me of the awful 19th century stories about mining towns where the workers were paid in company script instead of money, and the script was only redeemable at the company store. That meant the workers could be cheated endlessly (not knowing the real value of things expressed in a universal currency) and they also couldn't simply leave (because the company wouldn't redeem their own script for money).

Today's cell phone carriers are the modern equivalent of a predatory company town at its worst. Let's hope this idea catches on.

FYI, the term is scrip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrip

you'll no longer have to be tied to a specific carrier

This was always the case before with an unlocked handset; it's not entirely obvious how "carrier-free SIM cards" make any difference here.

Imagine it: a world where a SIM card is fully integrated with your device; no need to swap it out when you change carriers or travel overseas.

Isn't that basically what CDMA did?

The article also seems to ignore any mention of multi-SIM devices, which are quite common in most of Asia.

So many questions...

- Are "carrier-free" SIMs really illegal? As in, outlawed?

- How do you then choose the operator? Do phones even support such a "selection/login" interface? Or is it a bureaucratic process?

- If the latter, how do you easily switch carriers when traveling between Europe and US?

The article is flawed.

In Europe we could always buy mix and match SIM cards with mobiles since the early days.

Just how you get the mobiles is different.

In some countries you can choose between paying the full price or having a kind of virtual contract, which means you get it cheaper but it is locked to the operator for two years. After which you get the code to unlock the mobile.

Android Authority has a quote that seems to make more sense of this, the analogy with global 3G Kindles seems best to me:

"This is meant primarily for large scale M2M deployments, think smart metering, vehicles, Kindles, machinery etc"... "it is certainly not for normal consumers and it is not about soft-SIMS. It is about hard coded SIMs that are under control of the M2M deployer." http://www.androidauthority.com/carrier-free-sim-cards-way-3...

For consumers, if you have an unlocked phone you can already get global SIM cards from companies like Truphone or Woolworths Global Roaming (and several others) that roam onto other networks while travelling. Carriers are increasingly letting you roam with your current SIM card anyway.

But in those cases the sim is still tied to some provider who is managing the agreements for roaming.

Indeed. As someone who travels regularly between The Netherlands and Germany, I can say unlocked phones are not really the solution. It's annoying to have to switch SIMs every time you cross the border. Also, most interesting phone models do not have a dual-SIM option.

I am actually hoping that this will pressure carriers into removing roaming costs. It is very odd that pay exorbitant costs to use my Dutch T-Mobile subscription in Germany (T-Mobile is a German company), rather than just using calling time of my subscription.

That said, roaming costs have dropped a lot, thanks to regulation of the market by the EU.

http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/roaming

FWIW, my solution as a frequent country-commuter is to just have two phones. Get a tiny 15€ nokia weighting 60 grams and just use that when abroad in addition to your main one.

It is obviously slightly less practical than a single one, but it's better than switching SIMs and as a bonus you can have both numbers "always on".

Yes. That's what I have now.

Since I have a data subscription in both countries, I bought a cheap Huawei Android phone, installed Cyanogenmod and use that.

That's why dual-SIM phones exist...

> Also, most interesting phone models do not have a dual-SIM option.

This is the strangest thing. In China, phones are overwhelmingly dual-SIM, and it's actually more difficult to find single-SIM phones (even clones of major-brand devices like iPhones will have dual-SIM); the production cost of adding a 2nd SIM socket is negligible.

Genuine question, is switching SIMs that frustrating? The Nokia trick wouldn't work for me as I use my phone mostly for Google Maps & data, it's far cheaper to swap SIMs than buy an iPhone for each country :) Even in my home country I switch a SIM card between my two phones, depending which phone I need to have 3G access.

My tactic when travelling has been to use a global roaming SIM during a long-haul trip (eg so I have some data during airport stopovers), then switch to a local prepaid SIM with a good data allowance once I reach my destination. (Congstar has worked well for me in Germany.)

My fellow European, you've seen this I presume:

http://www.gsmarena.com/roaming_charges_in_the_eu_could_be_g...

It may not happen this year but I reckon the days of roaming charges inter-EU are numbered. Numbered I tells ya! Can't come soon enough if you ask me.

I think you have a good point here. My Tesla must have some sort of integrated SIM. Someday if that needed to be changed not touching the hardware to do it would be preferred.

Sounds like they're solving a problem very few people (couple of frequent travellers) have. Is swapping a SIM such a big deal? You can already move your number to a different carrier.

More, I think that swapping a card is actually pretty good UI. It unambiguously shows that you're making a big change. Unlike a toggle in the menu. It's easy to understand and hard to exploit.

OTOH, why not. Having an option of frictionless carrier hopping may have some unforeseen (at least by me) upsides.

The current steps to switch provider are:

1. Order your card online

2. Wait 2-3 days for your SIM, sometimes a week if you're unlucky

3. Keep using your old SIM as long as it's registered to your current number.

4. On the day where it's supposed to stop working carry both SIMs until you notice your number is ported.

5. Switch the SIMs and you're on your new number

I'm pretty sure that if that process is reduced to just step 1 that it will be good for competition.

> Sounds like they're solving a problem very few people (couple of frequent travellers) have. Is swapping a SIM such a big deal?

It's a small country so you could say it's a problem that a majority of Dutch people have. At a guess, I'd say there's no point in the Netherlands more than 100 miles from the border.

Say I am at a spot where I do not have signal from the carrier I am subscribed to, but I can have signal from another one. Why should there be any friction in buying individual minutes/megabytes from that other carrier? This is obviously impossible when SIMs are tied to a specific carrier, but in fact, why shouldn't mobile phones offer the option to pick any available carrier depending on which one is proposing the best rates?

Also, about swapping cards: dual SIM telephones are fairly popular, which illustrates that many people are using more than one SIM and do not like to have to switch (because they want, e.g., to be able to receive their texts on both). This is just a temporary solution, the right one would be to have one SIM but tied to multiple providers.

perhaps the regulators themselves represent a majority of that minority (for example having to travel in another country which is the seat of some part of the European burocracy).

I'm not really sure of the functional difference this provides over what we already have?

Here in NZ, you can already buy a phone and then put whatever SIM card you want in it. You can quickly swap between carriers in less then 30 seconds. The carriers give SIM Cards away like candy, usually with free credit on them so it's not like cost is a factor.

That's not to say folks always do this. For the most part, I think people just sign up with a carrier anyway because they want one of the $1000 smart phones or an iPhone and can't afford (or don't want) to pay the up front cost for one.

Basically, those that want to be on a Prepay plan with complete carrier freedom, already have that option. Those that are willing to be locked into a contract for a few years in exchange for a free/low cost smart phone can already do that too.

This still leaves the situation of carriers only accepting certified SIM's upon their network.

Also this is very much like being able to port your phone number across networks and with that you will still have provisioning hoops to jump thru as it is not that instant.

Now a SIM you could provision with more than one carrier, that would be handy, though that is already available with dual SIM phones. So I'm not entirly sure this is as big a deal as being made out. After all a SIM costs nothing, yet the phone that is locked to a network, now that is another issue. More important to have the ability to purchase a unlocked phone than a unlocked SIM that you can just swap out. Though this could lead to the Apple idea of having the SIM built into the phone and recreate CDMA for GSM, after a fashion.

Anyone know why carrier-free SIM cards are illegal?

I am not getting what does this mean? Does that mean I could switch to any Network Carrier within Holland and not having to switch sim card?

So basically a Software Defined Sim Card?

I thought Apple tried this but failed. May be they could try again?

TIL I've been breaking the law.

How so?

I have a carrierless SIM I've been playing with with a Pirelli DP-L10 phone and OsmocomBB.

*had

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