While SIM cards for CDMA are technically possible, they haven’t been widely adopted by CDMA carriers in the United States. But with LTE, Verizon Wireless will be incorporating the cards into many more devices.
The carrier yesterday said it has selected Gemalto to provide an over-the-air (OTA) platform and LTE Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC) for its LTE network. The UICC will be used inside mobile devices to manage subscriber information exchange - such as transferring contacts and preferences from one device to another - while providing secure access to the LTE network.
It’s significant that Gemalto was selected by the operator that is expected to launch the world’s first LTE network, says Jean-Louis Carrara, vice president of telecom, North America, for Gemalto. “That positions us very well” in terms of other LTE operators seeking SIM management solutions. Already, some 120 operators worldwide are committed to migrating to LTE, he notes.
With Gemalto’s solution, operators can figure out what device is being used by a given SIM. For example, a customer could call customer service, give the rep their phone number, and the rep could then trace the SIM to a specific device model. That has implications for everything from billing to speedy customer care.
Gemalto is providing the whole SIM infrastructure and UICC, while Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) also was selected to provide special Java-based SIM cards from the G&D SkySIM product line.
This marks the first time Verizon Wireless is a direct customer of Gemalto, which also supplies SIM cards to co-parent Vodafone. SIM chips are used in Verizon’s global roaming products, like the Storm. The first devices for the LTE network are expected to be data card-centric as opposed to phones.
Gemalto is the result of the 2006 merger of Axalto and Gemplus.