we are not suggesting:-) this has been thought out for quite a while now by people way smarter and invested in this issue than us. this mail wont be structured much but: the use cases are not just for banks though in Kenya KCB's mobi is the first hit towards autonomizing a banking app from the sim card. the current issues are obvious: - you are locked to an operators network - there is no competition in roaming - you cant route around network failures (we can maybe have national roaming) - mobile networks as they are can't really cover everywhere. so if you use a mobile network for tracking your car, there will be some blind spots. even when using GPS you need a data network to upload the payload. - this locks innovation to by pass an operator. The IMSI is the key basis but the IMSI's are only issued to telcos at the moment. The first solution is to issue them to anyone such that you connect it once and can connect anywhere. apple and google are pushing for this and is pretty much the soft sim concept. it gets us closer to killing the whole roaming nonsense:-). the IMSI is why you are able to do a sim swap easily. on the other hand -eap-sim i suspect will come out strong over time. - sims allow for zero user configuration for network admittance. (options are coming up, Intel leads the pack with authenticated flash so far). - apart from the IMSI, we have ciphers that 'feel' safe but in reality well go figure. SIMS are actually control. what we're seeing is requests for IMSIS to be issued to M2M endusers like a car track company. this allows you to authenticate to any network that has your IMSI on their HLR. (I simplify this line sana), dont confuse this with portability. - it allows for easy switchover - consumer electronics would use this too. my car when started and gets close to my house could 'ask' my lights at home to come on, turn on heating and maybe ask my wife (if that ever happens) to draw my bath. my point here is we are all relatively young here. see the possibilities. gitau On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 5:41 PM, Kinuthia Ngugi <kinuthia.ngugi@gmail.com>wrote:
What you people are suggesting is imminent, but there other factors that had informed the designers of GSM in their choice of a SIM card, not just security. Change of the network access mechanism (SIM or programmed), will be more of a paradigm shift rather than fancy designing, as in it will be driven by change in technology from the network operator and standardization point of view...
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 7:10 AM, Okechukwu <okechukwu@gmail.com> wrote:
William - you have nailed it on the head, the operator's have always resisted these efforts, but for how long? I believe in the next few years (3-5yrs IMHO), some operators will begin accepting this - For example, if Apple insits that they will forge ahead with no SIM iPhones, and approach a few operators for exclusivity, the benefits actually outway the odd's - and for sure Apple is hell bent on pushing this through. The questions of security and authentication has already been addressed, look at the white papers on the same.
./Ok3ch
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 4:59 PM, William Muriithi <william.muriithi@gmail.com> wrote:
it will happen soon. Im giving it the next decade. physical sim cards
are
the biggest bottleneck to innovation at the moment especially while doing things around M2M communications. I'm already seeing alternatives for what the SIM does best, authentication and identification.
gitau
Interesting, I did not think it was possible to dump SIM cards. Do you mind mention the viable alternatives you are seeing for those a tad curious ?
The reason I though we need them is I would not think the cellphone companies would trust a programmable solution for reason of protecting their revenue. How would they be certain whoever is trying to authenticate is the valid user if that data can be easily changed? And if we make it programmable once, would that in essence lock the phone to one cellphone company?
Regards,
William
On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 12:31 PM, Okechukwu <okechukwu@gmail.com>
wrote:
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/55428.php?s=h
I think we should not even have SIM cards, every phone should be programmable to any network - that was also once Apple's vision
./Ok3ch _______________________________________________ Skunkworks mailing list Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke ------------ List info, subscribe/unsubscribe http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks ------------
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