Usage in Mobile Phone Standards
The use of SIM cards is mandatory in GSM devices.
The satellite phone networks Iridium, Thuraya and Inmarsat's BGAN also use SIM cards. Sometimes these SIM cards work in regular GSM phones and also allow GSM customers to roam in satellite networks by using their own SIM card in a satellite phone.
Japan's 2G PDC system (which will be completely shut down by 2012; SoftBank Mobile has already shut down PDC from March 31, 2010) also specifies a SIM, but this has never been implemented commercially. The specification of the interface between the Mobile Equipment and the SIM is given in the RCR STD-27 annex 4. The Subscriber Identity Module Expert Group was a committee of specialists assembled by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to draw up the specifications (GSM 11.11) for interfacing between smart cards and mobile telephones. In 1994, the name SIMEG was changed to SMG9.
Japan's current and next generation cellular systems are based on W-CDMA (UMTS) and CDMA2000 and all use SIM cards.
CDMA-based devices originally did not use a removable card, and the service for these phones bound to a unique identifier contained in the handset itself. This is most prevalent in operators in the Americas. The first publication of the TIA-820 standard (also known as 3GPP2 C.S0023) in 2000 defined the Removable User Identity Module (R-UIM). Card-based CDMA devices are most prevalent in Asia.
The equivalent of a SIM in UMTS is called the Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC), which runs a USIM application. The UICC is still colloquially called a SIM card.
-
SIM card for Thuraya satellite phone
-
Ncell's SIM card
-
Grameenphone's SIM card
-
KDDI's au IC-Card
-
NTT DoCoMo's FOMA Card
Read more about this topic: Subscriber Identity Module
Famous quotes containing the words usage, mobile, phone and/or standards:
“...Often the accurate answer to a usage question begins, “It depends.” And what it depends on most often is where you are, who you are, who your listeners or readers are, and what your purpose in speaking or writing is.”
—Kenneth G. Wilson (b. 1923)
“From three to six months, most babies have settled down enough to be fun but aren’t mobile enough to be getting into trouble. This is the time to pay some attention to your relationship again. Otherwise, you may spend the entire postpartum year thinking you married the wrong person and overlooking the obvious—that parenthood can create rough spots even in the smoothest marriage.”
—Anne Cassidy (20th century)
“I went into the kitchen and got halfway to the phone before I realized that I couldn’t call her.... A lot of people who lost a mother or father or husband or wife will tell you that they find themselves almost talking out loud. I do that a lot.”
—Bill Clinton (b. 1946)
“In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens, a substantial part of its whole population, who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life. I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)