Friday, February 26, 2010

New SIM Card Turns Regular Phones into Wi-Fi Hotspots

The SIMFi takes a little bit of effort to wrap one's head around: This offering from Sagem Orga and Telefonica, announced at the Barcenola Mobile World Congress this week, puts a Wi-Fi radio into a standard SIM (Subscriber Identity Module), which is used in all GSM devices to authenticate to the network and associate billing information. This allows a 3G feature phone without Wi-Fi built in to become a hotspot, sharing mobile broadband with netbooks, smartphones, and other devices. It's fiendishly ingenious, as it obviates putting a 3G modem into multiple devices while offering "tethering" without a cable.



Cablevision Tries a Cellular/Wi-Fi Phone