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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?
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.
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.
The sim card on all models of iphones pop out with a simple paper clip stuck in the sim caddy hole. It seems you've never actually used one.
What?
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?
The article suggests a "special" sim tool or a paper clip. Those are both special since right now I don't have either on me. And many since there are two of them. And "completely disassemble" is true also since that's as far as anyone can take an IPhone apart. So the GP is right. So there. Thhhhhbbt! :)
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?
Well, you would certainly have a hot spot. Cramming a wireless transmitter in a SIM card and having any kind of a respectable range, you are going to have a LOT of heat building up in that SIM.
The chipsets in consumer routers get very warm... and that's with the silicon of the chips, shielding, heatsinks etc. In this case, you'll have a tiny microcircuit in a piece of plastic.
How are they going to deal with heat?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Since most cellphones put the SIM card under the removable battery and the iPhone doesn't have a removable battery, I can somewhat understand your confusion, but rest assured that the iPhone does indeed have a user-removable SIM card (that is actually a requirement of the GSM standard).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
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.
I got a "special SIM tool" with my 3GS. I stored it in case I was going to travel (to use other GSM providers).
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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.
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.
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.
Is this a "tribute" to Macintosh floppy disk drives?