Apple One SIM Porting Made Easy: Still Some Issues to Be Addressed

Apple in the recent press event while unveiling the iPad Air 2 made an announcement that it is coming up with the One SIM. This would be available to users in the U.S. and the U.K. Users with Wi-Fi and cellular models in these two countries will be able to switch carriers without changing their SIM cards.

This is very convenient to users as they can choose the plans that best works for them without long term commitments and during travel the user can opt for a local carrier without changing their SIM cards for the duration of the trip.

According to Znet a number of mobile operators in the U.S. and U.K. have signed up for the One Sim. Apple has made this available on the iPad and not on the iPhone the reason being that most of the users of the iPhone will be on a long term contract with the service provider to repay the cost of the phone so there is no need for them to switch between telcos.

Moreover, the phone number that is associated with an iPad is not relevant to the customer, so they can easily get a new phone number. Porting a number is more difficult than getting a new number for a smartphone because of the number of people switching between telcos.

Porting numbers in the future with the One SIM will be an easy task as users do not have to get a new SIM from the carrier they would like to port to cutting down the procedures involved. If Apple indeed gets this right then this would be a boon to customers. According to Znet, telcos would be in direct competition with each other and the cost of data would considerable come down, but there is a downside to this in regions where there is only one major telco the cost would be higher. This would be to compensate for the loss in the city.

There are privacy concerns as well as security issues that Apple has to address. That raises the question whether Apple will take responsibility over the account details of the customers instead of the local telcos? Will users be willing to give up their privacy for convenience?

Though the One SIM is a good move by Apple there are definitely certain very important issues that needs to be addressed.