Carriers Object to Apple's Plans for Built-In iPhone SIM Even as GSMA Moves Forward

[blackburn]

This sucks. You run out of battery and you want to swap the sim card to another friend's phone: You can't.

You have 2 or more phones and you are going to a not so safe place and want to take your crappy phone with you.: You can't.

Try another phone: You can't.

Sim cards always worked fine. I highly doubt that iPhones are subsided in my country.
They are expensive as hell. 750eur for an iPhone + 15 eur a month just for a lousy 300mb internet service (no calls or sms included)?
Well bite me . Uncle Steve and his control obsession someday are going to bring trouble to apple.

 

[fifthworld]

I don't really understand what the purpose of a SIM, if not essentially to keep the carrier/plan/user activation code. Once we dismiss this purpose, why even having an embedded SIM? Can carrier/plan/user code just be recorded in the memory of the phone? I'm missing something here?

 

[blackburn]

I don't really understand what the purpose of a SIM, if not essentially to keep the carrier/plan/user activation code. Once we dismiss this purpose why even having an embedded SIM? Can carrier/plan/user code can just be recorded in the memory of the phone? I'm missing something here?

Sim cards are like your identity cards to the operator and give you portability. Asking the operator to swap to another phone just because you want is probably stupid.

I once got mugged and the assaulter even gave me the sim card. No trouble got home got my crappy mobile and presto. (I could just ask another sim card, it's free!)

Without sim cards you get pretty locked. I was able to use an 2G iphone in my country because of sim cards. If it didn't support one I couldn't use it.
I like my freedom. To save a little of space it ain't worth it

 

[samab]

Adding another layer of complexity to already overburdened telecoms around the world is not a good idea for a "world phone".

This sucks. You run out of battery and you want to swap the sim card to another friend's phone: You can't.

If it didn't support one I couldn't use it.
I like my freedom. To save a little of space it ain't worth it

You already can't do it if your friend has a iphone 4 with a micro sim card and you have a regular size SIM in your regular GSM phone.

This isn't about getting cheap voice minutes for the 2 week oversea vacation. The is about getting a million things cheaper during the 50 weeks out of the whole year --- in a 500% mobile penetration world.

 

[blackburn]

I don't pay calls, nor sms or mms. I have a fixed rate (12,5 eur a month, that goes to credit to use when calling / texting to other networks or internet).
The only snag is that my other friends must use that tariff. But almost anyone uses it. Even stores.
And more for those who want to simply pay 5 eur a month they can but they just don't get any credit on their phones.

So what do I win? Unless they make the calls free without paying anything I'm not winning anything.

And the micro sim thingy they should have swapped to micro sims a long time ago.

 

[macUser2007]

You're wrong. Carriers were more than happy to restrict you and charge you fees for all this switching, until the EU passed laws against it. Once it was illegal in a huge portion of the global market (don't forget that most handset makers and many carriers are multi-national), the natural monetary pressure towards standardization started carrying it over to other places. ...

You don't make any sense. You are trying to obfuscate the issue with this EU law gibberish, which is absolutely irrelevant to this discussion.

Without a SIM card, you are stuck with your home carrier when you travel, and stuck with roaming and other fees. And Apple becomes the gatekeeper to your cell service.

I don't live in the EU and I've been able to buy local SIM cards virtually everywhere in the world where I have traveled, and use them in all the unlocked phones I've had through the years. Nothing to do with the EU or its laws.

 

[samab]

So what do I win? Unless they make the calls free without paying anything I'm not winning anything.

Penny-wise and dollar-stupid.

This is NOT about mobile phones. You are clinging to the old world view --- the go go 90's when Europe was supposedly ahead of the US in the wireless world.

This is about the future in which the whole economy benefits from cheap ubiquitous wireless business-to-business and machine-to-machine solutions in a 500% mobile penetration world. We are going to save thousands of dollars every year because our electricity bill is going to be lower, our food is going to be cheaper, our clothing is going to be cheaper...

 

[blackburn]

Penny-wise and dollar-stupid.

This is NOT about mobile phones. You are clinging to the old world view --- the go go 90's when Europe was supposedly ahead of the US in the wireless world.

This is about the future in which the whole economy benefits from cheap ubiquitous wireless business-to-business and machine-to-machine solutions in a 500% mobile penetration world. We are going to save thousands of dollars every year because our electricity bill is going to be lower, our food is going to be cheaper, our clothing is going to be cheaper...

So we unify all the systems into one, and when it fails we are doomed. An all online world is something that I wouldn't like to see.
I don't see things getting cheaper. China someday are going to stop producing things that cheap and prices are going to rise.

Anyway I don't see what the heck that has to do with sim cards. And I don't think us is ahead in the wireless world. You always complain of signal issues.
Here I live I only have lost signal once in my life. Even when exploring rural areas I have 3,5G.

 

[samab]

So we unify all the systems into one, and when it fails we are doomed. An all online world is something that I wouldn't like to see.
I don't see things getting cheaper. China someday are going to stop producing things that cheap and prices are going to rise.

Anyway I don't see what the heck has that to do with sim cards. And I don't think us is ahead in the wireless world. You always complain of signal issues.
Here I live I only have lost signal once in my life. Even when exploring rural areas I have 3,5G.

All the stuff may still be manufactured in China, but transporting it within your country is going to be more efficient with things like fleet management.

As I sited yesterday, it's about things like smart meters. Electricity companies are going to save millions of dollars a year because they don't have to hire people to walk around the streets to read electricity meters. Now do you want them to hire a bunch of licensed electricians to open up hundreds of millions of smart meters every couple of years just to change their SIM cards because they signed up with a different carrier.

http://gigaom.com/2010/11/18/carrier-organization-changes-rules-to-allow-the-apple-sim/

Physical SIM cards have no future in that world.

 

[blackburn]

All the stuff may still be manufactured in China, but transporting it within your country is going to be more efficient with things like fleet management.

As I sited yesterday, it's about things like smart meters. Electricity companies are going to save millions of dollars a year because they don't have to hire people to walk around the streets to read electricity meters. Now do you want them to hire a bunch of licensed electricians to open up hundreds of millions of smart meters every couple of years just to change their SIM cards because they signed up with a different carrier.

http://gigaom.com/2010/11/18/carrier-organization-changes-rules-to-allow-the-apple-sim/

Physical SIM cards have no future in that world.

There are more ways to send your power usage to the power company. Like having an extra wire to send the info or send it using existing structures like tv / phone lines or other wireless system like zigbee.

Still I highly doubt that an world full of wireless radiation is a very good thing.

Many people are going to get unemployed. More automation=less jobs.
The world if full of people, if machines do everything what are people supposed to do?
Not every body has a degree in engineering or any other kind of degree.

The existence of an programmable internal sim shouldn't rule out the existence of the physical sim.
Eg: Power companies and stuff can have their programmable sim and normal people can use regular sim cards.

Apple just wants to control who can use iPhones. So no more importing or using with non approved carriers. They must hate being forced to sell unlocked iPhones.

 

[archipellago]

You started off with the wrong direction.

UK prices are already lowest in the G7 --- with or without iphone exclusivity. And it is the cheapest because UK was the only G7 country with 5 national carriers. My Hong Kong example clearly illustrates that --- Hong Kong (up until last year) had an iphone exclusive carrier, but it was the iphone paradise since day 1. Why would I care if Hong Kong has an iphone exclusive carrier?

Of course, the iphone plans would go up after O2 lost its exclusivity --- the UK carrier market just went from 5 carriers down to 4 carriers. Of course, other UK carriers would sell the iphone plans at higher prices, they have fewer competition now.

The iphone's international launch makes international comparison easy. You don't need to know Swedish or French or German to compare prices with other countries. It bursted long held bubbles about their laws and regulations. For example, some people still claimed so-and-so country has "broad" consumer protection laws that makes simlocked phones illegal --- I can just refute that by looking up the iphone sales in that country, and they sell the iphone simlocked. Which means ONLY one thing, simlocking is legal in that country and that these internet forum posters mis-understood these "consumer protection laws".

rubbish....

utter rubbish....

It is now cheaper to own and use an iPhone than it ever has been over in the UK, cheaper since O2 lost the exclusivity.

cheapest base plan for iphone with O2 (24mth) is £919

possible to obtain it for £819m with other carrier.


we still are at 5 carriers BTW, Orange and T-Mob are owned by the same company.

Still Orange shops competing side by side with t-mobile shops.


next time, before you post..


get a clue.

 

[archipellago]

Financial Times reports that several European carriers are threatening to withhold their iPhone subsidies if Apple deploys the technology on the iPhone.

How does this differ from a cartel?

cartel |kärˈtel|
noun
an association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition​

the people holding the high prices are Apple, not the carriers.

The carriers are effectively saying we won't sell the phone....full stop.

they'll have to buy it direct from Apple (unlocked) for full price (499) which means the sales will just nosedive..

 

[amanset]

You can check iphone plans since 2007 --- not that hard to compare the G7 countries.

I am not talking about between countries. I am talking about the specific claim that the lack of competition by going down from 5 national operators to 4 in the UK somehow meant a catastrophic rise in the charges for iPhones, something that people in the UK have specifically said did not happen yet you still merrily claim as true. You seem to have some crazy notion that 5 is the magic number for operators and anything below that is utterly evil.

Regarding Sweden, which according to you has some of the worst iPhone charges of all due to competition, I would agree but not for the reasons you claim. Apple refused to deal with more than one operator for a long time. For ages only Telia had the iPhone, then after a year or so Telenor were allowed it to. Finally now, with the iPhone 4, have the other operators being allowed to join in (including Tele2, an operator which whilst originally Swedish is now rather big throughout Europe).

In essence, it wasn't a lack of competition in terms of operators. There WERE other operators that desperately wanted the iPhone, but Apple refused to deal with them. The lack of competition was purely Apple's fault, something they specifically organised from the beginning and was part of their business plan, probably in the beginning due to a lack of supply and to retain an element of exclusivity.

 

[amanset]

Even the GSMA is working on embedded SIM solutions.

There is NO future for physical SIM cards in the 500% wireless penetration world.

I live in the real world, with a mortgage, car payments, having kids to feed --- the 500% wireless penetration means that my electricity bill gets cheaper (because of smart meters), my food bill gets cheaper (because my local supermarket can afford fleet management)...

A million things are going to be cheaper with the increase use of M2M wireless solutions, and all you care is that your cell phone bill may get higher.

What a condescending bastard you are. What makes you think I don't live in the real world, with dependents, a mortgage and whatnot?

And also, just because a company wants something and pushes it through doesn't mean it is actually a good idea, thus "Even the GSMA is working on embedded SIM solutions" is meaningless.

 

[amanset]

I understand your points. My post was simply in a response to my comment on what Apple is looking to do and how it benefits the consumer globally.

I'm thinking beyond Sweden, the US, Europe and any other place. It seems like the goal is to make a TRULY global iPhone without the need for anything else and this is a step in that direction.

I'm thinking beyond Sweden as well, but also using it as an example to illustrate my point. What I wrote can be pretty much taken Europe-wide as that is how things are done.

 

[amanset]

You already can't do it if your friend has a iphone 4 with a micro sim card and you have a regular size SIM in your regular GSM phone.

Which is why the micro-SIM is a very bad idea that, as far as I can see, doesn't seem to be catching on beyond Apple.

 

[samab]

There are more ways to send your power usage to the power company. Like having an extra wire to send the info or send it using existing structures like tv / phone lines or other wireless system like zigbee.

Eg: Power companies and stuff can have their programmable sim and normal people can use regular sim cards.

Who are you to tell your local utility company how to send electricity usage data? You are basically precluding choices --- consumer choices away from the whole economy.

The iphone's launch internationally has proven one thing --- SIM cards don't matter. Just look at France --- outlawing iphone exclusivity, strict unlocking code schedules, yet idiotic tariff pricing because they only have 3 national carriers.

we still are at 5 carriers BTW, Orange and T-Mob are owned by the same company.

Still Orange shops competing side by side with t-mobile shops.

They are not competing --- they are co-ordinating.

I am not talking about between countries. I am talking about the specific claim that the lack of competition by going down from 5 national operators to 4 in the UK somehow meant a catastrophic rise in the charges for iPhones, something that people in the UK have specifically said did not happen yet you still merrily claim as true. You seem to have some crazy notion that 5 is the magic number for operators and anything below that is utterly evil.

I didn't say that there would be a catastrophic drop off in competition. I said that UK had the best pricing in the G7 (perhaps the whole industrialized first world). Going from 5 carriers down to 4 carriers is going to raise prices in the long term. And NOTHING is going to fix that. As France as the definitive example --- outlawing exclusivity won't fix that, forcing carriers to give out unlocking codes won't fix that.

Is it a BIG problem that UK went from 5 carriers down to 4 carriers? Not really. Plenty of industrialized countries in the first world have it even worst --- like Japan and Korea where their largest carrier owns over 50% of the market.

My point for the whole thing --- UK no longer has the most competitive mobile industry in the G7, the US is right now (with Verizon only having something like 32% of the market share).

What a condescending bastard you are. What makes you think I don't live in the real world, with dependents, a mortgage and whatnot?

And also, just because a company wants something and pushes it through doesn't mean it is actually a good idea, thus "Even the GSMA is working on embedded SIM solutions" is meaningless.

It's not about you, it's about the whole economy. It's not just about electricity companies. It's about every facet of the economy. If everybody shaves 0.1% of their cost --- for a trillion dollar economy, that's lot of money.

 

[MattInOz]

You don't make any sense. You are trying to obfuscate the issue with this EU law gibberish, which is absolutely irrelevant to this discussion.

Without a SIM card, you are stuck with your home carrier when you travel, and stuck with roaming and other fees. And Apple becomes the gatekeeper to your cell service.

I don't live in the EU and I've been able to buy local SIM cards virtually everywhere in the world where I have traveled, and use them in all the unlocked phones I've had through the years. Nothing to do with the EU or its laws.

Think About portable music before the mp3 player (iPod or otherwise) we carried as many tapes as we where willing to carry. SIMs carry far less data than a tape and sure they are much much smaller but you still have the inherent problem of lots of swappable media. How you do find the one you need at any given time. Computers are much better at this than us and can do it in much less space.

Imagine they you could buy a New prepaid Sim like you buy a music track it then downloads on to your device so as soon as you work in to the that companies area the computer does the switch for just like now with wifi hotspots.

Apple mostly care about the volume and complexity the SiM card adds.
With this system the can just buy new radio chips with a bit of extra flash memory in them to hold the active sim software. They could even have dual sim by adding more memory. Each radio could have it's own virtual SIM slot could be connected to a different service. Your phone could roam so your phone number stays active, your data could switch to a local carrier*.

The big thing is that by getting rid of the SIM slot and all the connectors involved. One less thing to go wrong, like people putting Sim cards in the wrong way. Companies that don't want to deal with Phone stuff could add mobile Data as easy as they could add wifi or bluetooth.

Not to mention it this is another patent to improve Apple's negotiations with Mobile Patent Pool.

*Whats the bet Data Roaming charges would suddenly drop if this even came close to real. I know my Australian mobile provider wanted $20 a mega for mobile data yet phone calls and SMS are only a few cents more.

 

[samab]

Regarding Sweden, which according to you has some of the worst iPhone charges of all due to competition, I would agree but not for the reasons you claim. Apple refused to deal with more than one operator for a long time. For ages only Telia had the iPhone, then after a year or so Telenor were allowed it to. Finally now, with the iPhone 4, have the other operators being allowed to join in (including Tele2, an operator which whilst originally Swedish is now rather big throughout Europe).

In essence, it wasn't a lack of competition in terms of operators. There WERE other operators that desperately wanted the iPhone, but Apple refused to deal with them. The lack of competition was purely Apple's fault, something they specifically organised from the beginning and was part of their business plan, probably in the beginning due to a lack of supply and to retain an element of exclusivity.

No, your arguments don't work at all --- just look at the US as the example. To this day, the US is still a iphone exclusive country --- yet it has historically one of the best iphone pricing plans in the whole industrialized world since day 1 in 2007. Hong Kong was the definitive iphone paradise for a long time --- another iphone exclusive territory (until last year).

Competition means that Verizon was able to say no to Apple and nothing happened to Verizon. No bolt of lightning on Verizon's bottom line. No desperation. That's called competition.

 

[amanset]

I didn't say that there would be a catastrophic drop off in competition. I said that UK had the best pricing in the G7 (perhaps the whole industrialized first world). Going from 5 carriers down to 4 carriers is going to raise prices in the long term. And NOTHING is going to fix that. As France as the definitive example --- outlawing exclusivity won't fix that, forcing carriers to give out unlocking codes won't fix that.

But it hasn't. That's the long and short of it.

You can keep saying "wah wah wah competition, four carriers, wah wah", but when it comes down to it, it has not happened. Of course if you can keep saying it is going to happen ad infinitum but the simple matter is that it still hasn't and just you saying so doesn't mean it is.

My point for the whole thing --- UK no longer has the most competitive mobile industry in the G7, the US is right now (with Verizon only having something like 32% of the market share).

The consumer doesn't care about competition. The consumer cares about features and cost. The customer has, if anything, seen a drop in costs since the UK went down to four carriers from five.

Explain that.

It's not about you, it's about the whole economy. It's not just about electricity companies. It's about every facet of the economy. If everybody shaves 0.1% of their cost --- for a trillion dollar economy, that's lot of money.

If it isn't about me, then please refrain from personal comments where you compare me to you living in the real world (the implication that I don't).

 

[samab]

But it hasn't. That's the long and short of it.

You can keep saying "wah wah wah competition, four carriers, wah wah", but when it comes down to it, it has not happened. Of course if you can keep saying it is going to happen ad infinitum but the simple matter is that it still hasn't and just you saying so doesn't mean it is.

The consumer doesn't care about competition. The consumer cares about features and cost. The customer has, if anything, seen a drop in costs since the UK went down to four carriers from five.

Explain that.

If it isn't about me, then please refrain from personal comments where you compare me to you living in the real world (the implication that I don't).

They only finalized the merger in March and we are in a global economic mess --- not that difficult to say that in the short term, prices are going remain soft. Hell, some countries like Japan are facing deflation.

Robber barons couldn't raise prices --- even if they wanted to, during the depression.

 

[amanset]

No, your arguments don't work at all --- just look at the US as the example. To this day, the US is still a iphone exclusive country --- yet it has historically one of the best iphone pricing plans in the whole industrialized world since day 1 in 2007. Hong Kong was the definitive iphone paradise for a long time --- another iphone exclusive territory (until last year).

Competition means that Verizon was able to say no to Apple and nothing happened to Verizon. No bolt of lightning on Verizon's bottom line. No desperation. That's called competition.

I went to AT&T's site to have a look at these marvelous plans.

"Data Plan for iPhone - starting at $15 per month"

You have to be kidding me. With Telia in Sweden I pay 69 SEK (10 USD by the exchange rate right now) for, crap, I don't even know. I use it daily and nobody has stopped me in the past year or so. There is also the option to not get a data plan and use it metered. Using that method the most you can be charged is 9 SEK/day.

Of course it is ultimately trivial to compare base costs between countries because exchange rates don't take into account the real cost/purchasing power/cost of living. 10 USD may be 69 SEK, but does 10 USD equate to 69 SEK in terms of percentage of income etc?

To be honest I have no idea, but from where I am sitting (which admittedly is limited as AT&T doesn't seem to like telling you any costs without inputting ZIP codes, being a customer or whatnot) these AT&T plans do not look anything like "one of the best iphone pricing plans in the whole industrialized world".

 

[amanset]

They only finalized the merger in March and we are in a global economic mess --- not that difficult to say that in the short term, prices are going remain soft. Hell, some countries like Japan are facing deflation.

Robber barons couldn't raise prices --- even if they wanted to, during the depression.

So the prices haven't changed in eight months and don't seem to be on the way to changing either. So, basically, you've got nothing.

But still, lack of competition! Five down to four! Dogs and cats sleeping together!

Anyway, I'm off to bed. It is 3am here.

 

[samab]

I went to AT&T's site to have a look at these marvelous plans.

"Data Plan for iPhone - starting at $15 per month"

You have to be kidding me. With Telia in Sweden I pay 69 SEK (10 USD by the exchange rate right now) for, crap, I don't even know. I use it daily and nobody has stopped me in the past year or so. There is also the option to not get a data plan and use it metered. Using that method the most you can be charged is 9 SEK/day.

Of course it is ultimately trivial to compare base costs between countries because exchange rates don't take into account the real cost/purchasing power/cost of living. 10 USD may be 69 SEK, but does 10 USD equate to 69 SEK in terms of percentage of income etc?

To be honest I have no idea, but from where I am sitting (which admittedly is limited as AT&T doesn't seem to like telling you any costs without inputting ZIP codes, being a customer or whatnot) these AT&T plans do not look anything like "one of the best iphone pricing plans in the whole industrialized world".

I said --- historically --- up until a few months ago, the US had unlimited iphone data plans.

It is not that trivial at all --- that's why I only compare prices in the industrialized first world. Most of the time, I even restricted my competition to the G7 countries. No point of talking about how cheap Portugal price plans are --- they have a much lower purchasing power than the G7 countries.

 

[samab]

So the prices haven't changed in eight months and don't seem to be on the way to changing either. So, basically, you've got nothing.

But still, lack of competition! Five down to four! Dogs and cats sleeping together!

Anyway, I'm off to bed. It is 3am here.

You got nothing.

Find me a economic theory that will say that a 4 carrier environment is more competitive than a 5 carrier environment.