40 Days and Nights to Update 8 Million SIM Cards

Gemalto says that it has completed a project, which updated nearly 8 million SIM cards belonging to subscribers of Thailand's Advanced Info Service (AIS). By updating the cards over the air, there was no need for the operator to mail out replacement cards or ask customers to come into an AIS point of sale. The entire campaign, which otherwise would have taken many months, was completed in less than 40 days.

The OTA campaign was rolled out on the back of a decision from the National Telecommunication Commission (NTC) in Thailand to shift from a 9-digit, to a 10-digit dialing system so as to meet the telecommunications needs of the country for the next 30 years.

The change also affected the SMSC settings within the SIM card, hence the need for the OTA updates.

"After careful consideration of deployment costs, potential impact on ARPU from our SMS service, and customer satisfaction, we selected Gemalto's OTA solution which we felt could help us reach out to a significant proportion of our customer base within a very short time frame," said Mr. Pornsak Hanvoravongchai, AIS SIM technology manager."

Posted to the site on 2nd July 2007