What is a GSM SIM card? $$

A cute video explaining what a SIM card is and what it can do for you (from Nokia).
Also, you can enter to win $2500 by giving feedback on the video.

My feedback to Nokia was 'give me a quad phone now!' Let's swamp them with this message!

What is a SIM card?

 

There is no technology reason why they can not. A SIM card is just a 'smart card', ie a credit card thick piece of plastic with a small microprocessor in it. It can store data and run JAVA scripts. They are also used today in credit cards, like the American Express Blue Card, for more secure transactions, and as phone cards in Europe and now for PC security.

The company that invented smart cards, more than 20 years, is French and GSM (Groupe Spéciale Mobile), a european standard. It not surprising that the two became linked together in Europe. I first saw a GSM phone with a smart card in it from Motorola back in 1997.

The original French name was later changed to Global System for Mobile Communications, but the original GSM acronym stuck.

 

BTW, the French company involved in the RUIM card is the same one that patented the original Smart Card, ie the SIM card used today: Schlumberger, the oilfield services giant. My original GAIT SIM from Cingular has the little SLB symbol on it.

RUIM and SIM's

Sept. 2001
Qualcomm (www.qualcomm.com), SchlumbergerSema (www.slb.com) and Samsung (www.samsung.com) recently announced the successful demonstration of an R-UIM card. The card would enable CDMA subscribers going into GSM markets to swap their CDMA handsets for GSM handsets, pop the removable cards into the GSM phones and use the subscriber information programmed into the cards to access existing CDMA accounts.

During the demonstration at the 3G World Congress in Hong Kong, Qualcomm’s Mobile Station Modem with an R-UIM interface was combined with SchlumbergerSema’s Simera Airflex card and a Samsung handset.

According to SchlumbergerSema, the card gives subscribers a way to transfer personal information to different handsets, as well as a way to roam in countries that use different radio frequencies.

Enabling CDMA subscribers to roam on GSM networks is the short-term advantage of the R-UIM cards, said Jack Jania, SchlumbergerSema North America field marketing director of the mobile communications group. In the long term, the cards probably will be used to provide security features, such as encryption, for m-commerce applications.

“One of the advantages that a SIM card would bring to any operator is that it allows a subscriber the ability to change his handset pretty easily, without having to purchase a handset that’s already been configured by an operator,” Jania said. “In the GSM world that dynamic has allowed handset prices to come down for the consumer.”

 

In case your patriotism is tweaked, Schlumberger is a international company today, incorporated in the Caribbean somewhere, with main headquarters in NYC.

But these smart cards are neat. Here is some stuff I found on the web:

Smart cards were invented in France in the late seventies and
tens of millions have been used over the past few years as pay phone cards,
banking debit and credit cards and GSM mobile phone identifiers.

In the late nineties, Schlumberger marketed the first
Java™ programmable smart card with a later addition of a
crypto-processor. The current smart cards used for security
applications derive from these early Java Cards. The advantage
of this new edition is that you could add, update or remove ‘card
applications’ called ‘cardlets’ or ‘card applets,’ similar to applications
on your PC. The crypto-processor allows complex cryptographic
functions to operate on the card, which becomes relevant to security.

Today, the smart card has these features:

• CPU: 8, 16 bit ‹Microcontroller
• Memory: EEPROM 32k,
64k and (soon) 128k
• External Clock Frequency:
1 to 7.5 MHz
• Operating Temperature:
–25 to +75 C
• Data retention: 10 years
• Standards: ISO 7816,
Java Card 2.1.1,
Open Platform 2.0.1
• Security: DES, Triple DES,
RSA 1024, SHA-
1, X.509 certificates, On-Card key generation

All in a credit size format (actually only the part the size of a phone SIM).

There are already examples of large deployments of smart cards
as employee badges in the United States. The United States
Department of Defense (DoD) has, at this time, the largest number
of smart card users through its Common Access Card (CAC)
program, with over two million cards currently deployed for
physical and logical security of its worldwide employees. A
non-negligible number of Fortune 100 companies have also
embarked on large-scale smart card deployment projects.

The smart card ‘vision’ is to provide a platform where all credentials
are centralized. One common ID card becomes the
badge that gives access to different ‘systems.’

Now they are used for:
• Picture ID
• Physical Access
• Computer Logon and Network Access.
• Health Record storage
• Electronic Payment
• Remote Access
• Email, document signing and encryption
• Web Access
• Wireless Authentication

Some day we will be able to put all of our credit cards on one card and use the one (MC, Visa, AE...) we chose. It will ligthen my wallet a bit.

BTW, has anyone with a CDMA phone with a RUIM card tried to use it in a GSM phone while in Europe? Does it really work? That would open the door beyond the A790 phone while traveling. But then, why would one?

 

Probably it is not an evil plot, but simply a lack of vision and stubbornness to accept a better idea.