Why does mobile internet require a SIM card?

Question

It just seems so archaic to require to have a piece of plastic inserted into a device to have a connection to the internet. If SIM cards only hold data about the user, why couldn't they be integrated into hardware and be reprogrammable?

Are there mobile network technologies which aren't based on cellular connection and if no, then why not? I assume those wouldn't require a SIM card for connection.

Answer 1

Two mobile technologies that come to mind which do not use SIM cards are 802.16 and 802.11 (WiMax and Wi-fi).

The point of the SIM card is to encrypt a unique identifier which corresponds to your phone number. This SIM contains encryption keys which allows the phone companies to secure your communication channel to prevent it from being sniffed by a third party for your privacy. This also prevents people from spoofing your unique ID and cloning your phone. There are other ways for dealing with this even within in the telecommunications industry, CDMA providers like Sprint used other ways of achieving this goal, but ease of use and standardized equipment just isolated sprint and increased their networking costs and they have now switched to SIMs too. There are certainly disadvantages to SIM based networks, but there are advantages as well. In the case of cellular communications, the benefits match the need and are therefore the right tool for the job - and there is nothing archaic about that.

Answer 2

The use of SIM cards was specifically designed to empower the user to (literally) take his subscription to another device, thus preventing network/vendor lock in. Oke, SIM lock countered this, but still.

So, archaic might not be the right word here. I read about the latest Apple devices, which have build in 'software SIMs'. Guess what? There are 3, 4 operators you can choose from (limiting choice), and if choosing a certain one, there's no going back (vendor locking). Of course this might change (for better or worse) whatever/whenever the Big Corp decides. Might as wall take out that little piece of plastic and stick another in.

Answer 3

Also with having your identity on a card you can switch between different hardware - cellphones, data modems, tablets just by inserting this cart in the new device. There is no need to have a connection between these devices to move the identity from one to another, which would be required if the identity was software.