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Standards makers have finally adopted a technology for a high-speed SIM card-after nearly a year of heated debate and deadlocked votes.
The standard, which could eventually lead to rollouts of SIMs supporting Internet and other multimedia applications, last month carried the smart card committee of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute with more than 76% of the ballots cast. That's despite a last-ditch effort by handset makers to defeat the proposal, which they considered too costly and complex.
In the end, USB "Inter-Chip," similar to the technology used on PCs, enjoyed the support of all of Europe's major mobile network operators, including Orange and Telecom Italia Mobile, which backed USB in the second round of voting.
"First, it was important to have a high-speed solution," Ilario Macchi, in charge of SIM card development at TIM, tells Card Technology. "Without Orange and TIM, there would have been a big risk of remaining deadlocked."
The two operators are the strongest supporters of the high-capacity SIM concept, which cannot go forward without a fast interface between handsets and SIMs. At present, SIMs and handsets communicate at speeds reminiscent of dial-up modems-the communication link is still based on smart card technology introduced 20 years ago.
With USB, cards and phones would exchange data at perhaps 8 megabits per second, allowing for downloads of, for example, picture phonebooks, links between SIMs and PCs and, eventually, convergence between handsets, PCs and other devices, with the SIM as a focal point.
Some operators, such as France's Bouygues Telecom, backed USB for...