London Banter - View Single Post - Dual SIM phones was:Worker killed by Southern train was covering for brother

Roland Perry · July 14th 19, 09:21 AM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london

In message , at 08:39:30 on Sun, 14 Jul
2019, remarked:
On Sun, 14 Jul 2019 07:42:38 +0100
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 12:29:56 on Sun, 14 Jul
2019, Clank remarked:
Roland Perry Wrote in message:
That's where the albeit fairly rare dual-SIM phone has a role.

Only, for some reason, rare in the UK.

The reason is obvious: so many phones are either SIM-locked to one
provider, or are fitted with SIMs on non-rollover tariffs, that the
opportunities for fitting a second true-Pay-as-you-go SIM are quite
limited.

Of course back when 2G phones first came out the SIM was on a card you could
switch cards easily in seconds but presumably that was deemed too convenient

I'm not sure how many phones ever took the full size SIM.

Commercial considerations killed them off: the idea was that a person
would have a SIM, and be able to share/borrow a phone to use it in.

But the networks wanted to tie people into having their own phone (and
contract) in particular not wanting a phone they'd subsidised being used
with a SIM from a rival network, or even by using up the scraps on a SIM
from their own network.

Hence the extra inconvenience of having to make a phone with such a
large slot in it was actually running counter to their commercial
interests.

for users whereupon inserting the SIM was changed to require removing the
battery and messing about trying to get some sum postage sized thing into a
tiny slot at an awkward angle.

That's more to do with shrinking phone sizes. It doesn't have to be that
bad if there's room for a so-called standard mini-SIM (rather than micro
or nano), especially if the phone has a clip-on battery.

And now with ever shrinking SIM sizes they're
almost impossible to change without tweezers.

Yes, some of those brands are a bit long in the tooth, but I've managed
to acquire non-contract SIMs for all of them (although the Orange one
expired recently, probably because I'd not used it enough).

Since when has buying PAYG SIMs for most networks ever been a problem? You talk
as if they're a rarity.

Ones where the credit rolls over and you don't have to make a regular
calls to keep them alive, aren't quite as common as you claim. The
networks hate them because they tend to get used in "glovebox" phones
were they have all the costs of maintaining the number and the billing
records, for virtually no revenue.

Then there's a few phones which need a "5v" SIM, and don't work with a
3v one. Those SIMs are getting harder to find (some say that it's only
Pound-shop Orange SIMs these days, although I have a very old T-Mobile
SIM which is compliant).
--
Roland Perry