Years from now, international travellers will be puzzled that people ever had to wrestle with roaming charges on their mobile phones. But today, it remains a minefield of unexpected costs, bill shock and simply not being able to connect. The main culprit is the SIM card in our phones, which in effect holds us hostage to the network operator that provided it.
It has been the foundation stone of the mobile device for more than two decades despite the fact that we have long had the technology to move away from a physical SIM. Of course, the operators have resisted, as that makes it just too easy to switch networks. For travellers, this makes life especially difficult, as they are often trapped in absurd roaming rates.
The tyranny of the SIM is especially harsh for travellers, who must find local providers of prepaid SIM cards if they want to avoid
About 18 months ago, Apple tried to address the issue with the Apple SIM, a pre-installed SIM card for iPads, allowing users to switch between four US providers and two in the UK without having to change SIMs. One of these, GigSky, also provides international data plans but, with prices typically starting at $10 for 40MB of data – around R4 per MB – it makes even less sense than ad hoc mobile data prices in South Africa.
A Canadian company founded four years ago by South Africans, KnowRoaming, came up with a workaround: a SIM Sticker that is adhered to a regular SIM card to turn it into a roaming card. In effect, it gives the SIM an alias of a major operator in almost every country in the world.
This means data rates typically come down to between US10c and US15c per MB. However, in around 70 countries, an unlimited data package is available for $7.99 a day.
That sounds like a silver bullet for travellers, but the solution is hamstrung both by the sticker and the need to fix it to the SIM card with a special applicator. That means instruction manual, the potential for damage, and added complexity.
But now, KnowRoaming is bringing a product to market that makes the SIM card almost redundant. At the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, it unveiled the Software SIM, a virtual equivalent of a SIM card that resides entirely in the phone software.
Aside from the engineering required, it has been made possible by KnowRoaming buying a small mobile network operator in the USA, giving it access to all the global interconnection facilities available to conventional carriers. And it struck a deal with manufacturer Alcatel to adjust the software embedded on its phones to support the Software SIM.
“We now have our own core network, a commercial relationship with all other networks, a management platform, and a delivery mechanism that requires no hardware modification,” says company founder and CEO Greg Gundelfinger.
This means, he says, it is both “an end-to-end solution for network connectivity globally” and a platform to deliver SIM cards to any phone in the world. All it requires is the cooperation of manufacturers to update the software built into the phone.
He won’t call the technology behind the Software SIM revolutionary, as variations on the theme have offered one or other elements, from embedded SIM card apps to billing solutions, but none have been able to produce a turnkey solution before.
For budget-conscious travellers, that is revolution enough.
* Arthur Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter on @art2gee