If you find yourself needing some reassurance about what side of the fence Apple’s interests fall on—customer or carrier—the embeddable SIM might provide some answers.
Back in early October, patents and rumors started popping up, suggesting that Apple was working on an embeddable SIM system that would work with multiple carriers. It wasn’t really talked about at the time, but it’s become pretty obvious that an embeddable SIM card with multiple carrier support would be a huge advantage for consumers. Consumers would regain their purchasing power, and carriers would be forced to focus on providing the best experience for their users, instead of trying to figure out a way to trap them in the telco ecosystem.
The new SIM would be “embedded in a chip that has an upgradeable flash component and a ROM area. The ROM area contains data provided by Gemalto with everything related to IT and network security, except for the carrier-related information. The flash component will receive the carrier related data via a local connection which could be the PC or a dedicated device, so it can be activated on the network. Gemalto will provide the back-end infrastructure that allows service and number provisioning on the carrier network.”
So, now carriers are starting to realize how easy it will be for their customers to switch to another carrier should they be unhappy with the service provider they’re working with, and they don’t like it one bit.
Think about that for a minute. The carriers are worried that if they aren’t providing you with adequate service, it’ll be easier for you to leave. They’re now privately threatening Apple with unsubsidized phone sales should Apple implement the embeddable SIM.
This is the reason I’m buying my iPhones unlocked moving forward. I may not be buying a new phone every time one’s released due to the increased cost, but I’d rather pay a little bit more for my phone than be treated like a captive by the carriers.
The embeddable SIM would be a big step in breaking telecom control over customers, and I’m pretty happy that Apple’s doing all they can to make sure it happens. So the next time you read about Apple’s draconian ways, stop and ask yourself just who they’re trying to help. Sometimes consumers are on the raw end of the deal, but in this case, as well as some others, Apple’s looking out for consumer interests.
It’s hard not to support that.
Article Via AppleInsider
