why did europe have GSM only

I'm not sure about whether the information is still accessible once it has been blocked. That's an interesting question, does anyone know if that is the case? I'll try and find out myself.

 

You can read the data on a SIM from a non-networked SIM reader. I don't consider phone numbers too sensitive though. My problem with SIMs is that you can't save "contacts", just a name and a phone number. I end up storing contacts on the phone rather than the SIM to keep all the additional information.

 

That's a limitation of SIMs.

 

I have done quite a bit of SIM card reading lately as a hobby and troubleshooting and theres not to much personal info unless you store the contacts on the SIM. Regardless if a CDMA or GSM phone gets stolen they can still look at your Contacts and WAP settings ETC.

Every GSM has a IMSI number that can be blocked as well as black listing the IMEI number which is basically the same as the ESN on CDMA phones.

Most of the info on the SIM is Network related.

 

3G phones can store multiple numbers per contact on the SIM card and can also save email adresses if the SIM is 3G.

AT&T doesn't blacklist IMEI numbers — don't know about T-Mobile.

 

Don't forget that SIMs have a PIN which you can enable to protect your data as well.

 

No US carrier blacklists IMEI's.

 

That doesn't help me. My wife has a T-Mobile Wing, plus she stores all the home and work addresses. Technically, 3G is not GSM, its the UMTS replacement.

 

In the US you get "buckets" of 400 minutes per month or whatever, and most people don't even use them all, so rounding to the next minute isn't that big of a deal (except in pre-paid cases, where I think they do bill to the second even in the USA). In Europe, it's more of a pay-as-you-go system, so it probably makes more sense to bill to the second.

I'm pretty sure if you report your phone as stolen to ANY operator, they will block your SIM from any network access, because once you report it stolen, any calls after that is the responsibility of the carrier, and not the customer.

Blocking the IMEI (the phone's serial number) is a different story, some countries do, some don't. But that won't affect billing. Also, stealing phones is big $ to organized crime groups. They re-flash the IMEI or just re-sell them in East European countries where operators don't block IMEI.

 

The same is true in some European countries, you get an allowance of minutes that you may never use up. Your second point is interesting though; around 70% of the UK market is PAYG so that could be a strong factor in per second billing. Mind you, there has always been per second billing as far as I can remember so perhaps it is just the done thing?

I think I remember hearing some rumblings about a pan-European system to block IMEIs on all European networks. That would certainly be a good move, and one wonders why it hasn't happened yet.

 

I only have experience with AT&T & T-Mobile prepaid solutions in USA and both round up to the next minute — no per second billing. My Russian prepaid had an interesting choice — I could go with per-second billing and pay higher per-minute rate or pay lower per-minute rate and get a combo billing: up to a minute is billed as a full minute, everything above is billed per second. Later they switched to a plan that does per-minute billing at much lower rate (all prepaid plans).

Not only do they give you the PIN, they also give you the PUK right away. Some cards give you PIN2 & PUK2 as well.

 

It's always to the carrier's advantage to go to full minute increment billing as well as to have "send-to-end" billing.