T-Mobile Develops Tiny Embedded SIM Card

T-Mobile USA has announced a first-of-its-kind embedded SIM for Machine-to-Machine (M2M) solutions. Nearly the size of a head of a pin, the durable embedded SIM withstands challenging environmental factors such as temperature, humidity and motion to deliver reliable wireless connectivity.

The embedded SIM preserves many of the benefits of a GSM-based SIM solution (authentication, encryption and storage), but at a fraction the size of the traditional SIM you'd find in a mobile phone. In addition to the much smaller size, the embedded SIM differs from today's SIMs in that it's built from silicon - not plastic. The embedded SIM is designed to be hard-mounted onto M2M modules, accelerating deployment by allowing customers to go directly from the factory to the field without having to provision and manually insert a SIM card.

"T-Mobile's embedded SIM solution drives efficiencies, speeds time to market, and extends the life of M2M solutions even in the toughest environments," said John Horn, national director of M2M, T-Mobile USA. "With our simple, streamlined certification process, we expect partners to have commercial solutions based on this new technology running on the T-Mobile network as soon as this summer."

"M2M services are experiencing impressive growth, and we've predicted that the US enterprise M2M cellular service market will reach nearly 20 million connections by 2012," said Steve Hilton, vice president of Yankee Group's Anywhere Enterprise research group. "According to recent Yankee Group research, speeding time to market and simplifying the sales process by compressing the supply chain is critical. T-Mobile's embedded SIM offering further accelerates the M2M market opportunity."

Posted to the site on 23rd April 2009