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Originally Posted by Stu
If Orange FR offered to sell your your O2 UK 200 megs for 20 Euros payable via the App store (while allowing you to keep your UK mobile number and voice calling channel), how would that play out?
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That would require the iPhone not only having two (virtual) SIM cards, but also two RF units - one that would maintain network connection for your home SIM card and one for a second SIM, for which the extra roaming data plan would be actived.
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02 would lose data roaming, but keep a piece of the buy and people wouldn't be afraid to use their iPhone abroad.
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If operators were ready for such cooperation they would just provide way better wholesale prices to each other and so enable each other offering such data roaming options without the technical challenges such a MultiSIM-solution would involve.
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Why is this SIM change being rolled out in Europe first? Yanks don't leave their country as much much because the US is physically as large as the EU. Most of the US borders aren't into populated Reas. US cities near Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Baja California are the exceptions, but more of the border are places like North Dakota.
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This would be rolled out in Europe first, because we have 3-4 competing operators running their network on the same iPhone-compatible frequency band (UMTS2100) in each European country, which provides a much higher incentive to use an iPhone on another network than in the US, where the iPhone will only work on a single 3G network (AT&T) and switching to the only other iPhone-compatible operator (T-Mobile) means abandoning 3G speeds, which has a strong impact on user experience.
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As I noted earlier, this could also be an attempt to thwart unlockers.
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This is the most likely reason. Apple just want to keep full control over your iPhone.