Holland permits network-agnostic SIM card: huge implications

From	RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com>
Newsgroups	comp.misc
Subject	Holland permits network-agnostic SIM card: huge implications
Date	2014-03-18 08:53 +0000
Organization	solani.org
Message-ID	<lg91ho$7aq$1@solani.org> (permalink)

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From the «burst of astonishing reason» department:
Title: Holland says yes to the network-agnostic SIM card
Author: Kevin Fitchard
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 19:13:35 -0400
Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/1xo9sa7GXLs/
Podcast Download URL: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/connectedcar-logo.png

Regulators in Netherlands this week opened the door for any company — whether
Apple, Audi or your local electric utility — to issue its own SIM cards
configured to no particular carrier. This is just one country changing its
rules[1], but if other countries follow suit, it could have big implications
for the internet of things and even change the way we buy mobile service.

A few years ago in a Gigaom post[2], European economist and policy analyst
Rudolf van der Berg explained how such a setup could work for Apple if it
chose to shed the carrier yoke and sell connectivity directly to its iPhone
customers. Basically Apple would provide SIM cards to all of its customers,
and then remotely assign them different carrier networks as customers
activated their service.
[image 4][3]

Source: Flickr / mroach

Apple could buy data and voice services in bulk from hundreds of different
carriers around the world and then pick which network would be most
appropriate for each of its customers at any given time. So if an iPhone user
left his home country for a vacation in France, for instance, he wouldn’t get
charged the usual high roaming rates. Instead Apple would just reassign his
SIM card to one of the French networks. Instead of being a guest roaming onto
a French carrier’s networks, he’d be at “home” anywhere in the world.

Whether an Apple or a Samsung has any interest in becoming a carrier to its
customers remains to be seen — back in 2010, Gigaom reported that Apple was
working on such a soft-SIM[5], though nothing seemed to come of it — but it
could be of enormous use in the machine-to-machine (M2M) communications
world, van der Berg told me in an email exchange this week.

Take a car company like GM, which is putting LTE connectivity into all of its
cars[6]. In the U.S., GM is locked down to a single operator. It doesn’t
matter if you buy your smartphone plan[7] from Verizon or T-Mobile; if you
want to connect your Chevy to an LTE network, you have one choice: AT&T.

With a carrier agnostic-SIM, a carmaker could attach your car to whatever
carrier to you happen to have relationship with and change your connection
whenever you switched carriers. Or it could run a managed service with
multiple carriers, connecting to whomever’s network had the best capacity or
coverage wherever you happened to be driving, said van der Berg, who is now
with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development[8] (OECD).
[image 10][9]

Source: Gigaom

While some carriers might be opposed to that concept, the mobile industry
overall would benefit, van Berg said. In the internet of things, there is a
lot of resistance to connecting gadgets and appliances to the cellular
network because doing so would require device makers to lock into a carrier.
But a programmable SIM card would alleviate that burden, making cellular
connectivity much more attractive, van der Berg said.

Of course, we’re still a long way from this kind of carrier-agnostic
networking become a reality. The Netherlands has eased its rules, and the GSM
Association is behind the concept[11], but the network-less SIM is still
illegal in almost every country in the world, van der Berg said.

And even with legal barriers lifted in Holland, there are technical
limitations that need to be overcome, van Berg said. Still, getting Dutch
regulators on board was a big victory, setting an example that van der Berg
hopes other governments will follow.

Correction: This post previously stated that a network-agnostic SIM is also
legal in the U.S. and Germany. That’s the not the case. It is allowed only in
the Netherlands.
[image 12]

[image 14][13]

Related research and analysis from Gigaom Research:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial[15].

* What happened in mobile in the fourth-quarter 2013[16]
* A look back at mobile in the third quarter[17]
* Mobile 2012 and beyond[18]

[image 20][19][image 21]

Links:
[1]: https://zoek.officielebekendmakingen.nl/stcrt-2014-6781.html (link)
[2]: http://gigaom.com/2010/11/20/how-to-bypass-carriers-apple-style/ (link)
[3]: http://gigaom.com/2011/08/15/should-apple-buy-a-carrier-or-just-go-around-them/2836146903_d58d601414/ (link)
[4]: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/2836146903_d58d601414-e1313437507256.jpg?w=708 (image)
[5]: http://gigaom.com/2010/10/27/is-apple-about-to-cut-out-the-carriers/ (link)
[6]: http://gigaom.com/2014/01/05/gm-begins-its-4g-car-rollout-with-chevy-corvette-impala-malibu-and-volt/ (link)
[7]: http://gigaom.com/2013/09/28/4g-cars-are-coming-but-we-wont-have-much-choice-in-how-we-connect-them/ (link)
[8]: http://www.oecd.org/ (link)
[9]: http://gigaom.com/2013/02/20/your-next-kindle-could-be-embedded-in-your-car/connectedcar-logo/ (link)
[10]: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/connectedcar-logo.png?w=708 (image)
[11]: http://gigaom.com/2010/11/18/carrier-organization-changes-rules-to-allow-the-apple-sim/ (link)
[12]: http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=gigaom.com&blog=14960843&post=825217&subd=gigaom2&ref=&feed=1 (image)
[13]: http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?iu=/1008864/Gigaom_RSS_300x250&sz=300x250&c=678251 (link)
[14]: http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ad?iu=/1008864/Gigaom_RSS_300x250&sz=300x250&c=678251 (image)
[15]: http://research.gigaom.com/?utm_source=mobileutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=825217+holland-says-yes-to-the-network-agnostic-sim-card&utm_content=kfitchard (link)
[16]: http://research.gigaom.com/report/mobile-fourth-quarter-analysis-and-outlook/?utm_source=mobileutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=825217+holland-says-yes-to-the-network-agnostic-sim-card&utm_content=kfitchard (link)
[17]: http://pro.gigaom.com/2012/10/mobile-third-quarter-2012-analysis-and-outlook/?utm_source=mobileutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=825217+holland-says-yes-to-the-network-agnostic-sim-card&utm_content=kfitchard (link)
[18]: http://pro.gigaom.com/2012/09/mobile-industry-2012-segment-analysis/?utm_source=mobileutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=825217+holland-says-yes-to-the-network-agnostic-sim-card&utm_content=kfitchard (link)
[19]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?a=1xo9sa7GXLs:qff_99vgX_A:yIl2AUoC8zA (link)
[20]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?d=yIl2AUoC8zA (image)
[21]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OmMalik/~4/1xo9sa7GXLs (image)

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Holland permits network-agnostic SIM card: huge implications RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-03-18 08:53 +0000

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