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."

Comments

Progress.

[migla]

Wifi on sim? Before you know it, you will get Sy-Fy in Vim.

Re:Progress.

[migla]

What silly idiot comes modding this a troll? Shouldn't you be modding comments that matter and comments people will actually read? Well. I'm glad I can keep one bad mod occupied down here in the dungeons. Mod this down too, I dare you. It means you won't get to touch as many comments that might matter.

Re:Progress.

[migla]

Haha! Made you waste a mod-point!

solves the wrong problem

[czmax]

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.

Antenna?

[molo]

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

Re:Antenna?

[adolf]

I agree -- it's not practical. Just look around: there's no other products that manage to shrink an antenna down in size, and still operate at 2.4GHz, are there?

Given the severe lack of anyone doing stuff like this, it must be impossible to use an antenna shorter than a quarter-wavelength for anything, ever. I mean, it's obvious, isn't it?

Re:I'm wondering

[ircmaxell]

I think that will depend on the control you have over the functionality. Will the handset be aware of the radio? Will it be able to control it (turn it on and off)? Does it support encryption?

OTOH, it could be a portal for providing ubiquitous coverage for WiFi. Imagine having a city full of people with these (Even with reduced range to reduce the clutter). Then you would be able to access a "hot spot" from just about anywhere. Of course you'd be charged for access (by the provider most likely), but still it's a pretty cool idea...

Re:iPhone

[LiENUS]

What?

iTouch!

[sznupi]

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)

Re:I'm wondering

[Brian Gordon]

Of course you'd be charged for access (by the provider most likely), but still it's a pretty cool idea...

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. And of course people could run free exit nodes off their spare bandwidth at home or something to give the network some tenuous internet access.

Re:SIM=GSM

[sznupi]

Well, Sagem and Telefonica certainly aren't concerned primarily about limitations of US cellphone market. Telefonica cares mostly about their network technology, which is quite firmly in GSM family. As is 80+% of mobile subsribers in the world.

I don't expect any drivers to be neccessary; this solution seems to be precisely about NOT using "special" phone. SIM cards typically expose to a phone their customized menu item, so there's certainly a way to control any functionality added in the hardware of said card.

Ah crap

[QuantumRiff]

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!

Re:I'm wondering

[aztracker1]

You have this backwards, TFA is talking about sharing the phone's 3G connection with other computers (say your laptop).

Re:I'm wondering

[ircmaxell]

Latency would be the problem with that kind of network. Unless the density of these routers was so high that you were never more than 3 hops away, but then you wouldn't really need to have the mesh network in the first place...