Little cards expected to make big splash in wireless competition

A little card known primarily by an acronym just might have a significant effect on competition among wireless handset manufacturers and carriers.

Removable user identity module (R-UIM) cards, which support roaming between CDMA and GSM networks, are expected to hit the Chinese market before the end of this year. And some insiders think they’ll make a big splash.

It’s significant that the cards are set to debut in China, according to Terry Yen, CDMA Development Group (CDG) (www.cdg.org) Asia Pacific region director. China is not only a huge market; it’s also one that supports low-cost manufacturing. Yen expects the increased competition among manufacturers and the low cost of producing devices in the Chinese market to drive down the price of handsets.

“The Chinese market is so big and essentially requires so many new handsets that every single terminal is going to be made to be able to use an R-UIM,” Yen said. He added that currently 19 manufacturers have introduced CDMA handsets that support R-UIM cards.

“All of a sudden, there’s as much competition for CDMA phones with SIM cards as there is for non-SIM-card phones,” Yen said.

Yen also expects carrier competition to be affected by the introduction of the cards. European GSM carriers such as Vodafone that have CDMA affiliates in other countries will now be able to offer roaming through their affiliates rather than paying roaming fees to competing GSM carriers. Also smaller GSM carriers will have more roaming partner choices, which should keep carriers’ roaming charges competitive.

Qualcomm (www.qualcomm.com), SchlumbergerSema (www.slb.com) and Samsung (www.samsung.com) recently announced the successful demonstration of an R-UIM card. The card would enable CDMA subscribers going into GSM markets to swap their CDMA handsets for GSM handsets, pop the removable cards into the GSM phones and use the subscriber information programmed into the cards to access existing CDMA accounts.

During the demonstration at the 3G World Congress in Hong Kong, Qualcomm’s Mobile Station Modem with an R-UIM interface was combined with SchlumbergerSema’s Simera Airflex card and a Samsung handset.

According to SchlumbergerSema, the card gives subscribers a way to transfer personal information to different handsets, as well as a way to roam in countries that use different radio frequencies.

Enabling CDMA subscribers to roam on GSM networks is the short-term advantage of the R-UIM cards, said Jack Jania, SchlumbergerSema North America field marketing director of the mobile communications group. In the long term, the cards probably will be used to provide security features, such as encryption, for m-commerce applications.

“One of the advantages that a SIM card would bring to any operator is that it allows a subscriber the ability to change his handset pretty easily, without having to purchase a handset that’s already been configured by an operator,” Jania said. “In the GSM world that dynamic has allowed handset prices to come down for the consumer.”