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Comment by Loic | Hacker News Reader

I suppose you live in the US, with only a couple of huge carriers. I live in Germany, I am French, travelling a lot between France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland. I am so happy with the SIM card system. I can switch carrier if I want easily (swap the SIM card) but especially:

I do not care when I travel which carrier my phone will pick. It will work, nothing to do and I know what it will cost in advance.

I love SIM cards.

Update: Keep reading the thread with very good comments about identity. The added benefit of the SIM card is that it is protecting/managing your identity on the network without a hard link between your phone and you.

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I travel enough to see the benefits as well. Phones that handle multiple sim cards are also nice.

I also view it as an added layer of security. My phone can't be connected to the network until the pin for my sim is entered. The ability to save data to the sim is also a nice feature. I don't really see any reason for them to go away.

Each phone could have a built in key for signing. You could tell operators to not allow any other phone except for yours (which has this key) to access your account. Not a problem.

Though, going to a store and proving who you are just to change a phone would be annoying. Maybe we could automate this. For extra security, we could use something besides a username and password. Maybe, the phone company could give us something, and we could use that to identify ourselves. Something we have. Maybe we could get the manufacturers allow us to store the identifier in the phone itself, and the phone could read the id card, and tell the phone company "Hey, this guy is good people!" that way, the entire process is all automated.

Good idea!

What happens here - is the phone itself becomes the sim card. That is troublesome on a number of levels. I'd rather push those functions to a little piece of plastic that is easy to move between handsets.

"You could tell operators"... How and where? When I'm in Thailand on vacation, I want data but I don't want to have to worry about registering my phone - I just go to kiosk and get a sim.

When I was in Ethiopia a few weeks ago getting a sim took a bit of work. I had to give them photos and some other documentation. A lot of governments are moving this way. Once it was done though, I had the sims I needed and the phone choices were wide open.

Maybe I'm missing a piece of the puzzle but in my experience the sim is what makes me free. The idea that the existence of a sim == being locked down comes from a broken telecom system not a technical limitation of the format.

There are some countries you do have to give extra documentation, and often providers will rip you off by giving you more airtime only if you register.

Funny you mention Ethiopia, the telecom there is completely state controlled, and it has been used to thwart opposition (listen in on calls, shut down complete SMS, etc). It's one of the many "remnants" of the communist regime. Supposedly Orange was coming in to manage and change that however...

SIM cards are exactly this, with the added benefit of (almost) two factor authentication. If I have my SIM card, I can be reasonably confident that you can't pretend to be me. If phones managed keys, I'd be more worried that you've managed to copy my key somehow.

Especially give the sheer number of apps out there and reports of apps doing more than they should, as well as users blindly installing apps with higher permissions than they actually require. This would get exploited very quickly no doubt.

I'd love to see a pocket hub that will take multiple sims & route my calls transparently over WiFi/VoIP.

Tell one major problem with SIM is the ancient outdated hard locked data model, and phone software developers refusing to implement a proper merge when exposing both SIM and phone data in UI.

FYI, Birman lives in Russia.

But you will pay outrageous roaming charges. Why should you? Would you accept roaming charges on Wi-Fi access when abroad?

They wont pay roaming because they swap sims - 4th sentence.

Why would you pay roaming charges when you swap sim card for a local one?

Besides it's not that bad in EU with roaming anymore http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/roaming/t...

Also, some operators allow to purchase "european data" - ie. unlimited european data roaming for cheap.

I don't think you love simcards, I think you love the freedom to switch & a simcard is just the way you get that freedom right now. From a UX perspective the simcard is a pretty weak solution. For a starter, why do I have to reboot my phone to switch carriers?

You don't have to reboot your phone (e.g. the iPhone doesn't need a reboot when switching SIM cards). But a lot of phones hide the SIM under the battery, and your phone won't keep running with its battery off.

> From a UX perspective the simcard is a pretty weak solution.

Actually from a UX perspective sim cards are a pretty strong solution because there is a clear and simple 1:1 mapping between a physical object and a carrier. That's as simple an UX as can be: if I want to use carrier A I use SIM A, if I want to use carrier B I use SIM B.

> For a starter, why do I have to reboot my phone to switch carriers?

I don't know, do you? I don't. I just take out the iPhone's SIM tray, replace the SIM and put the tray back in.

> Actually from a UX perspective sim cards are a pretty strong solution because there is a clear and simple 1:1 mapping between a physical object and a carrier. That's as simple an UX as can be: if I want to use carrier A I use SIM A, if I want to use carrier B I use SIM B.

That must be why it's so common and popular to use physical tokens for the address list too. I really live to sift through the little plastic cards I keep in my pant pocket (careful not to lose one!) to find John Doe, insert it into the phone and reboot, just to make a phone call.

Or not.

Your nonalogy makes no sense whatsoever:

* Addresses don't significantly impact the phone's behavior (and its costs), current ISP does

* As I noted, you might want to get out more, phones don't need to reboot when changing SIM

* Considering the number of people who criticize iPhones for not having a µSD slot, physical tokens do indeed seem trendy in crowds which need them

> Your nonalogy makes no sense whatsoever:

I'll agree it has several flaws. Still.

> Addresses don't significantly impact the phone's behavior (and its costs)

That would be a reason to keep the interface a physical token? Elaborate, please.

> phones don't need to reboot when changing SIM

The stupidly designed ones (with the sim behind the battery) does, but I see your point.

> people who criticize iPhones for not having a µSD slot

I was under the impression they miss the ease of data transfer and cheap storage space, not the act of changing the card to access other data. Please elaborate.

Actually the analogy is good. Having a physical token is very messy from a UX perspective. A menu is just as easy: If i want to use carrier A, i select carrier A in the menu, if i want to use carrier B, i select carrier B in the menu. This is what i do every day with my WiFi-network on my laptop....

Your µSD-comparison is what doesn't make sense. An SD-card can contain several gigabytes of data that would take hours to transfer to the phone. A SIM-card probably has a small key on maybe a few kilobytes that can be transfered and stored by any more or less modern communication-method, wired or not, within a few seconds.

But from a security perspective SIM is a much better solution because once you make the key transferable by software it will be much easier to steal an identity.

Business cards are hardly ideal. But, knowing that someone now has your correct contact information, because you just handed it to them is worth something. The problems only really show up when you want to keep several addresses at the same time and for most people that's rarely an issue with SIM cards.

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