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Wi-Fi In a SIM Card
gaijin_ writes "What if, rather than buying a MiFi or using a Wi-Fi router app like those on the Palm Pre Plus, you could stick a SIM in any device and have a shared 3G connection? That's what Sagem Orga and Telefonica are promising: they've developed the SIMFi, a USIM card with an embedded Wi-Fi radio that, when dropped into any standard handset, can share the 3G HSPA connection with various Wi-Fi clients as an instant access point."
Beyond that my instinct says this could be huge, how big of an impact does a product like this really have? Mind you, the questions of implementation and all that aside, is this really practical or just another thing that might eventually be a standard feature?
Could you serve up a "hotspot" in an unlocked iPhone?
With Joiku hotspot thingy.
So I'd buy this because?
Deleted
Wifi on sim? Before you know it, you will get Sy-Fy in Vim.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
This is a technical "solution" to a non-technical problem. The ability exists today but is predominately blocked by the cell phone providers.
This quote from the article shows how deluded these people are: "it seems likely that carriers would give the SIMFi away as long as you took out some sort of mobile data contract". If that was the case then I'd be able to use tethering on my iphone RIGHT NOW.
Sure, neat technical hack. Nice miniaturization there. But making this functionality available in a smaller form factor isn't the problem.
You still need a 2.4GHz antenna, which at 1/4 wavelength is more than 2cm. Where are they going to put it? Certainly not in a standard SIM chip package.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
I'll take things that will never be implemented by an American telcom for $1000, Alex.
Great... I can has cheap 3G data access now? Don't know what it's like in the US, but this side of the pond I'm looking at at least £1 per Mb.
Joikuspot has been doing this for ages.
Finally, a way to tether with my iPhone.
This could be a start for those of us not willing to pay monthly data plan fees to get a smart phone out of our dumb phone. I don't want to pay a hefty monthly fee just to own a smarter phone. Oh, wait, I have Verizon, no SIM slot. So I can't use it anyway. What about a microSD equivalent, with some brains as well as a radio and of course some flash memory?
They won't like this one bit and go to great lengths to disallow or prevent it from working.
The other way around is much more interesting - get iPod Touch and, if needed, connect via WiFi and this SIM card; placed in a mobile phone that is, well, primarily a good phone. Cheap. One of those with uberlong battery life.
On a sensibly priced contract or outright prepaid (I can get 4 GiB, valid for 3 months (and if recharged again before that 3 month cut-off, usnused data are added to new portion), for 12 Euro; good enough)
One that hath name thou can not otter
>What if, rather than buying a MiFi or using a Wi-Fi router app like those on the Palm Pre Plus, you could stick a SIM in any device
But you *can't* stick a SIM in "any" device, only in GSM devices. Won't work on two of the three largest carriers in the USA, Verizon and Sprint. To make matters worse, Verizon will still charge a fortune to do that, and Sprint dropped the ability to legitimately tether smart phones completely (although you can do it with the Pre quite easily, anyway, but it is not legit. Maybe Sprint will wise up and offer something official this year?)
And even if you had a GSM phone, it still has to be compatible, AND fit, AND drivers/software were available for that particular phone, AND the carrier had to somehow work with it.
Consider how much you have to pay for data when you go beyond a typical 5GB/month limit. I would guess that your wireless provider would be more than happy to enable you to quickly burn through that 5GB and start paying the exorbitant overage costs.
It has a HUGE impact. Now, when you go to a tech convention, instead of having crappy wireless at the convention center, you will have 5000 people, all carrying their own access points, trying to use the same dozen channels! Horray!
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
I herd you like wireless connections...
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
What is the price $1 per meg? and $5 per meg outside of the usa? mexico and canada $2 per meg?
Already does this using the hardware in the phone. I use it on my iPhone. It's also available for Android, Palm, Blackberries and Winmo.
(can also use USB for tethering, works better than Apple's own)
http://www.junefabrics.com/index.php
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
They'll cripple the feature. AT&T will complain if you use it.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
This company will make bank on this product if it works as advertised.
This is very silly. Before people forgot about PDAs we had CF, SDIO, and SpringBoard. We don't need any new technology for small device expansion, instead of re-inventing it, we just need SDIO slots on phones. It is like we went backwards with technology.
Ignoring the technical challenges of getting a WiFi transceiver into something the size of a SIM card - how exactly is the SIM card trading data with the cell phone to begin with?
Cell phones have an open back door to their wireless data channel through the SIM interface? One that will, without software on the phone, just allow you to transport data?
Even if you CAN talk through the SIM card interface and for data around how ever you want - how fast is that interface? It's meant to read off SIM cards that hold a tiny amount of data. So little most internet speeds could transmit the entire contents in a single second quite easily. Or is the SIM card supposed to have some kind of BT transceiver in it as well to tie to the cell phone?
There's no detail in the linked article and...given that cell carriers lock down this stuff in the phone I fail to see how it's possible even if the miniaturization is practical.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Sagem Orga and Telefonica are promising: they've developed the SIMFi
SCNR...
It might be possible to engineer something like this that would have higher bandwidth to the phone, but only by also specially engineering the phone. It's not something that could work with existing phones that are designed for normal SIM cards.
As cool as it would be if this were real, I don't see how it can be. Seems like a marketing idea, not an engineered product.
What the fuck are you talking about? This device is designed by a european telco for people in europe to tether wirelessly using a sim card and wifi.
Why would you think data is more expensive the further you get from the world's greediest bastards? If anything the opposite is true.
Look, why not just build WiFi app's (eg, for the many handsets already equipped with WiFi),
based on eg, Skype-protocol (we can pay ~$6 / mon for Skype-to-Skype calls, but cannot
now dial to actual phone numbers (eg, using SkypeOut credit and/or Skype subscriptions).
Why not a WiFi app. for Nokia, etc. that can reach one's choice of Asterisk server, eg, at
home or in the office?
Who wants to plug-in nano-connectors & risk breaking nano-coaxial cables, that lead out
to an external WiFi antenna?!?
And - if the antenna is internal, who'd want YAA = Yet Another Antenna pumping out WiFi
from a new location in the handset?!? (It or heat that it generate might interfere with exist-
ing circuitry, inside the handset, and/or add to the dose one's skin or brain is getting...)
Let's re-think this one, eh? :-)
"Well, someone would be charged by an ISP for a connection to the internet, but you don't necessarily need the internet. It's easy to imagine a free mesh network running over nodes like this, with everyone running as a repeater for the common good. Various local services (bus schedules, local maps, restaurant locations, ordering a cab or a pizza) could be made available by servers connected to the mesh network without anyone paying for an internet connection."
Common good and commercialism in the same sentence, beautiful. Throw in free servers and electricity for the win.
It's not 1920 anymore. There are 2.4 Ghz antennas that are the same size as a grain of Basmati rice.
Example: 2.2mm x 6.5mm 2.4GHz Ceramic Chip Antenna
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
Usually SIM card is placed in a socket with metal shield or clip, with circuit board and a keyboard on one side (keyboard mostly consisting of two layers of conductive film) and a battery on the other side (containing metal electrodes and cell casings).
With shielding like that, good luck getting any signal in or out, unless this thing has a separate connector for an antenna outside the card (and good luck getting support for that from phone manufacturers and carriers).
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.