Thanks to Motorola, cellphone users would soon be able to use up to four phone numbers in a single handset, without even having to buy a multi-SIM one.
The US-based company is in talks with all Indian telecom service providers to launch iSIM — a flexible wafer that can be attached to the original SIM. This allows the user to access three other numbers on the same handset.
“ We are in talks with all Indian players for our intelligent SIM (iSIM) application. We hope to strike a deal in the second quarter of this financial year,” Motorola (India) Country Head (Home & Networks Mobility), Subhendu Mohanty told Business Standard.
“ iSIM is based on a flexible wafer that can be attached to the subscriber’s original SIM providing additional services that can be controlled via SIM tool kit (STK), allowing third-party developers to build applications and services,” he said.
Each iSIM supports up to four IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) profiles and each IMSI profile can be provisioned to one phone number. Subscribers can switch between different phone numbers provisioned to different networks, or the same network, without changing SIMs.
An IMSI is a unique, usually 15-digit, number associated with mobile users. It is stored in the SIM inside the phone and is sent by the phone to the network.
According to Mohanty, the new application is expected to pick up very fast in Asian markets, since the trend of one person keeping two mobiles is quite popular here.
It is also possible to define a special “Killer SMS” in this application, which blocks or resets the mobile when it is lost or stolen. Besides parental control applications, Motorola’s iSIM platform would offer compelling value proposition for applications such as mobile commerce for banking, payment and near field communications (NFC), call control, alternative call routing and call back system, among other things.
Last week, Motorola announced the first commercial deployment in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) for its iSIM application platform.
Bipper Communication AS, a Scandinavian web-based company involved in providing services to keep children safe when using mobiles, would use Motorola’s iSIM platform to enable parental control services, making mobiles safer and better adapted for use by children.
The parental control service from Bipper would help parents manage their children’s approved number list from the Bipper website. Parents could then monitor their children’s use of mobiles through an easy-to-use portal. Who they communicate with, how much and when they use they use the phone can also be tracked.
Bipper’s iSIM application would be initially launched in Bulgaria and Norway in 2010, before its rollout across the rest of EMEA. The service is also scheduled to be launched in North America during this year.
According to research group Strategy Analytics, dual-SIM phones would capture 7 per cent of the total mobile phone market by 2014.
