Article translated from the original
http://zonamovilidad.es/index.php/tecnologia/17-tecnologia/1630-la-isim-de-motorola-podria-revolucionar-el-mundo-de-la-movilidad
written by Pilar Bernat.
12th November, 2009
It could have happened that the technological piece of news of the day has gone unnoticed, but the truth is Motorola has presented in Madrid today the iSIM card, a solution that at a glance, even when it’s not been tested yet , you can see it was being demanded by the mobility market.
It consists on a slim plastic SIM that can be stuck and unstuck like a post-it to our mobile phone SIM. A geometric extension appears from one of its ends followed by a stamp-sized square of the same flexible material that is folded when we close our mobile phone.
The mentioned piece is suitable for all mobile phone models, it can be interchanged between them and apart from memory capacity it also has one of the mobility technological keys: NFC.
Near Field Comunication is a data transmission system based on physical contact. A simple touch between two NFC surfaces is enough to start instantaneously the interchange of digital information between both devices. Although we have been talking about NFC for several years, the main problem for its massive distribution and consequently the demonstration of its effectiveness, has been the necessity of renewing all the existing mobile devices in the market.
Now, Motorola solution allows the development of a large number of applications that depended on the integration of NFC or any other similar technology.
Good examples
To the good understanding of the American company proposal, let’s use some examples: we arrive to a cash machine and we want to recharge our prepaid card. It’s as simple as touching, indicating the amount to transfer and the money is sent from our current account to our phone just in seconds. Once we have finished the operation, we go to the supermarket beside and we do the shopping. We can pay the invoice then just by touching a surface with our mobile phone.
The following day we have to take a flight. We arrive to the airport and by touching or just locating the phone less than 2 centimetres far from a reader device, we get our boarding pass. As we reach our destiny, with a new touch on the hotel reception desk a small application is installed in our mobile phone. That simple way we have not only been registered, but also our phone has been turned into our room key.
What else? The ideas are endless… transportation, fitness centers, shopping, security, access control…
The iSIM cards have a minimum of 256KB memory (a typical application is 20KB), so we could activate more than 20 Java applications and move them all at the same time to another mobile phone just exactly as we change the SIM.
The prize?... Insignificant. Normally the operator would provide the iSIM card when we buy a SIM. However it also could be given by our bank to make transactions, by the credit card management companies, airlines, etc.
And finally the most important point: Experts assure that it has a very high security level, since it counts with the maximum possible range of encryption. Besides, the user defines the parameters; so we can determine when a password must be required and even establish different security levels: not required in less than 5 euro operations, password required in operations up to 50 euro, only with bank authorization in transactions of more than 100 euro, etc.
Motorola iSIM will be available on the second four-month term of the 2010 year.