Smart card company Sagem Orga and Telefonica plan to roll out a new SIM card that features integrated WiFi, allowing any GSM phone to act as a universal and interoperable HSPA/WiFi router and significantly expanding the market for mobile broadband services.
This new generation of SIM card, known as SIMFi, will enable Telefonica to broadcast HSPA through WiFi to notebooks and netbooks, essentially turning regular 3G phones into WiFi hotspots.
"We strongly believe that SIMFi, with its unprecedented functionality for wireless access, will significantly improve the user experience," Remy Cricco, technology innovation manager at Sagem Orga, said in a release. "If customers can connect their notebooks to the Web anytime and anywhere by simply using what they have with them most of the time and what is the most trusted secure device--the SIM card--adoption can be expected to be enormous."
For more:
- see this release
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