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  #1  
Old 12-12-2009, 11:30 PM
Jon Westfall
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Default US Carriers: Make Multiple SIMs a Reality!

http://www.mobilityminded.com/5568/...ne-phone-number

"These days, most of us use Bluetooth enabled car kits, and it is not necessary to have a second SIM card for safe vehicle use anymore. However ... many people have multiple phones. Smartphones are now quite prevalent, but sometimes you don't want to carry your most complicated phone everywhere you go. For instance, I like to carry a smaller phone on me during the weekends while on the road with my kids. The hassle now is to get my SIM card out of one phone and place it in the other. And we all know how frustrating it can be to do so. It would be so much easier to have a duplicate SIM card already placed in my second phone..."

Johan van Mierlo (and others, including myself) have had ENOUGH with the 1 SIM per number draconian rule of US carriers. It would be relatively easy for carriers to allow more than one SIM per number, which would be great for those of us with multiple devices that hate swapping SIMs in and out all the time. Mobility Minded is running a poll right now on the issue, and if you're wanting a second SIM to soothe swapping, I'd encourage you to vote!

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  #2  
Old 12-13-2009, 01:22 AM
Fritzly
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the problem is that the mobile phone market here is way behind the rest of the World and Carriers are the responsible for it.

They locked the market with these subsidized, crippled, mobile phones and people have become aquainted to this status quo.

Besides AT&T is like the kiss of death; since they bought BellSouth both the quality of the customer service and the overall quality of the products offered dramatically sinked.... only the costs keeep raising.

The other day I was inquiring about the U-Verse TV service because I was considering replace my cable provider, another plague we have here in the US, and when I asked to the representative what would have been the total cost, meaning tax included, for the service he replied that it was not possible to calculate it and I would find out the amount of taxes with my first bill.........

Needless to say I did not switch.
 
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  #3  
Old 12-13-2009, 04:14 AM
Lee Yuan Sheng
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Yay my favourite rant! I'll repeat it here again:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fritzly View Post
They locked the market with these subsidized, crippled, mobile phones and people have become acquainted to this status quo.
Nobody wants to pay the higher price of carrier freedom either. Witness the right moans here when the price of an unsubsidised and unlocked phone is published. Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too!

It's not totally down to the carriers; enough people in the US have shown to be most willing to put up with it, even in tech communities like this. What hope do you have for carrier reform?
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Old 12-13-2009, 08:09 AM
ctmagnus
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Your neighbours to the north, too!

Sha' right, like that'll happen in my lifetime.
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  #5  
Old 12-13-2009, 05:30 PM
Fritzly
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee Yuan Sheng View Post
. What hope do you have for carrier reform?
None!

What could disrupt Carriers dominance though could be the new "Google Phone"; its existence seems to be be confirmed and if and when it will become available it would be a further black eye in MS face.

They should have come out with a MS phone when they found themselves with a consistent edge in the mobile market and, even more important, seen by the public as an innovative company in that specific segment.

Another important, and possibly devastating, issue could hit MS if the Google Phone will become a reality: MS would face a serious identity crisys because they would be the only big player without its own hardware.

Time will tell but if in January a Google phone running Android on a Snapdragon chip etc. as described by Techcrunch here:

The Google Phone, Unlocked (Confirmed And More Details)

I will seriously considering jumping wagon, at least for the time being.
 
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  #6  
Old 12-13-2009, 08:58 PM
frankenbike
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At least with GSM and their 3G variants, you get sim cards. Us poor CDMA schmucks don't even have the choice of something we can remove and switch to other devices at all.
 
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  #7  
Old 12-14-2009, 03:39 AM
CeluGeek
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Taking the SIM card out of one phone and putting it in another one shouldn't be rocket science.

Seriously, I can't pretend I care the least bit about two SIM cards with the same phone number, when carriers are now going out of their way to ensure you can't even swap your SIM with different types of phones. Forced device-specific data plans are taking care that soon enough, you can't take your SIM card out of your Windows phone and put it into an Android, iPhone or dumb phone. To me, this practice is the one that has to stop! I should be able to put my SIM card into any frequency-compatible GSM/UMTS phone, and not have services crippled based on what type of phone (smart or dumb) I'm using.
 
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  #8  
Old 12-14-2009, 04:18 AM
Lee Yuan Sheng
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CeluGeek makes a good point. Multi-sim is not very useful until you get true GSM interoperability in the US. Meaning, no locked devices, locked sims, or what have you.

Currently I'm running on a multi-sim setup. One goes into my Nokia E71, as my main phone, and the other goes into the HD2 as the Internet tablet/streaming media player. Since it's using the same line I can utilise the same data plan on both phones without having to pay extra. It also lets me use the HD2's telephony capabilities without my contacts wondering who is calling. That I believe is something that'd not be possible in the very constrained telco environment of North America.
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Last edited by Lee Yuan Sheng; 12-14-2009 at 04:24 AM..
 
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  #9  
Old 12-14-2009, 04:19 AM
Sven Johannsen
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I kind of agree with CeluGeek, but I do get some of the issues. Until I got an iPhone, I never had an issue swapping SIMS around my WM phones, and even had one with a data plan and one without on occasion. I would guess you wouldn't have much issue still doing this with relatively similar phones. I don't expect I would have any problems sticking the SIM that is in my Pure, into my Epix or Tilt. When I swapped arounfd my Pure and iPhone though, to get the number where I wanted it, I had some problems. Visual Voicemail on the iPhone stopped working, and my Pure got an illegible txt message everytime someone left me a voicemail on it. Seems that there is a process by which visual voice mail is initiated, which my Pure didn't understand (naturally), and wasn't being sent to my iPhone, since AT&T thought there was a pure at that number. A relatively short call to customer service straightened that out, no hassle. They are different provisioning plans, but the same price. Yea it is a bit of a hassle, but it is due to the different capabilities of the devices in this case.

I would love to have a second SIM with the Pure #. That could go in the Tilt or Epix, when I want something that lends itself to data/text entry more so than the Pure. Process could then just be turn the Pure off, or even just stick it in flight mode (no carrier contact) and fire the other device up. Much better than the shut down, pull back, remove battery, swap SIM, kabuki dance I go through now.

I guess what I don't get is the carrier insistance on my having a dataplan on a phone just because it is capable of it. If I owned an HD2, bought outright, why shouldn't I be able to throw a Pay-As-You-Go SIM in there. There is no data provisioned for that number, so it shouldn't even connect, and I can turn just the data off if need be. I'd use the thing as a phone normally, and find a WiFi hotspot to do data work. Maybe you can, I might check that out.
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  #10  
Old 12-17-2009, 05:25 PM
tdcao
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Um... Why is every body getting on the carriers' case when the real problem here is the difficulty of removing a SIM card from a phone/pda? Shouldn't it be the manufacturers' problem? The manufacturers need to make it easy to remove the SIM card from a phone/pda just like the way they finally made it easy to remove the memory card from a BlackBerry device (BlackBerry Bold.) Lift up the side door. Push on the memory card and off it goes.

Let's pretend the carriers agree and now you have 2 SIM cards for 2 devices for one number. And then both of the devices are turned on at the same time? Let's hear your ideas of how to handle this minefield of a situation. Believe me. It will happen!

To me the need for a dual SIM card phone/pda (a phone/pda that contains 2 SIM cards from 2 different carriers) is much more real than the need for 2 SIM cards for 2 devices for one number.
  • Imagine a small time business owner who needs to travel abroad frequently. Since international data/voice roaming charge is off the roof, a dual SIM card device will save that person a huge amount of money. When that person is at home, that person would switch to the home SIM. When abroad, switch to the foreign SIM.
  • Imagine a person who surfs the web more than talks on the phone/pda. Instead of buying a voice plan + data plan bundle (around $100/month total), that person can now buy a data only plan on one SIM ($50/month) and a pay-as-you-go voice plan on another SIM (can be as low as $10/whole year). It can even be from a different carrier! Imagine the competition between carries for customer loyalty!
Besides, I still don't get why people needs 2 personal phones/pdas. I know people needs a business phone/pda and a personal phone/pda, as in my case. However, my company pays for the business phone number and I pay for my own personal phone number. My personal phone/pda goes with me at all time. Not that because now I'm on a weekend trip with my kids, I suddenly find it much more cool to finally be able to use that magnifying glass to read info off of a tiny screen. Also, over-consumption has already done enough damage to this planet. Let's not trash it some more with that really-not-needed-second-personal-phone/pda of ours.
 
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