SIM card readers don't like T-Mobile?
 

When I was in Europe last month I ended up collecting a lot of SIMs for various prepaid providers. It occurred to me that a SIM reader/writer would be a good investment and when I found one at the T-Mobile store near Westminster Abbey in London, I couldn't resist and bought it.

When I got home last week, I made a nice set of phone numbers on my main SIM and then duplicated that list onto my other SIMs. This went well with a whole bunch of SIMs (Rogers Canada, Orange UK, Vodafone UK, O2 UK, 3 UK, tele.ring Austria, and Swisscom Switzerland, and even an inactive Fido Canada SIM that I thought would make a great backup for my phone list) ... but peculiarly, even though I bought the SIM reader at a T-Mobile store, none of my T-Mobile SIMs would work properly with the reader. I have three T-Mobile SIMs: US, UK and Germany. All three acted the same.

Ultimately I ended up getting my phone book list onto these SIMs by reading them into my ancient Motorola P280 from the Fido SIM and then rewriting them onto each T-Mobile SIM using the phone. However, this would be a lot easier to do with the SIM reader software.

Any theories? Any workarounds?