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Message Digest 
Volume 28 : Issue 259 : "text" Format

Messages in this Issue:
  What could/would cause a SIM card to belly-up? 
  Re: What could/would cause a SIM card to belly-up? 
  Re: What could/would cause a SIM card to belly-up? 
  Re: What could/would cause a SIM card to belly-up? 
  Re: What could/would cause a SIM card to belly-up? 


====== 28 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest.
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 01:26:21 -0700 From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: What could/would cause a SIM card to belly-up? Message-ID: <4AB495AD.1080107@thadlabs.com> I'm really scratching my head with this problem and Google searching doesn't provide anything useful other than the obvious "clean the contacts" and "apply more pressure to the contacts" (either with scraps of paper or black tape). Either age and/or AT&T seems to have disabled and/or wiped out the SIM card in my cell phone (Motorola RAZR V3) overnight. Is it possible that AT&T could have remotely zapped the SIM due to it booting up as Cingular and not AT&T and/or that I've had the cell phone contract for so long that AT&T wants me to buy a new phone? Yeah, paranoid thinking, but it IS AT&T :-) The good news is the phone's display shows "Check SIM" and not "Insert SIM" (meaning it recognizes the card's presence) and the phone claims it can still initiate emergency calls (e.g., 911), so the cell phone hardware itself appears to be in fine shape (and still looks brand new even after almost 5 years). I'll be visiting the local AT&T store(s) this weekend to "Check SIM" in other phones. The symptom suggests it's only the SIM card that's bad and a new one should be free/easy to get, so hopefully I'll be back online sometime Saturday afternoon. If the existing SIM card will operate in other cell phones (I won't know until Saturday afternoon), then I'm again (doubly) puzzled, and if I have to buy a new cell phone, that will require the remainder of this weekend to feature and price shop for something that is just a phone and not a gadget overloaded with features/junk I'll never use. For what it's worth, the phone was working perfectly when I placed it down on the same spot on my dresser that I have for nearly 5 years now, and it wasn't until I awoke to an odd beep and saw "Check SIM". Any advice, anecdotes and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Date: 19 Sep 2009 13:39:33 -0000 From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: What could/would cause a SIM card to belly-up? Message-ID: <20090919133933.22472.qmail@simone.iecc.com> SIM cards sometimes just fail. If you take your phone into an AT&T store, they should give you a new SIM at no charge. Before you leave, be sure the SIM and phone work, and also be sure that they didn't also change your service plan or its expiration date. R's, John
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:10:37 -0700 From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: What could/would cause a SIM card to belly-up? Message-ID: <4AB5810D.9060803@thadlabs.com> On 9/19/2009 8:59 AM, John Levine wrote: > SIM cards sometimes just fail. > > If you take your phone into an AT&T store, they should give you > a new SIM at no charge. Before you leave, be sure the SIM and > phone work, and also be sure that they didn't also change your > service plan or its expiration date. Thank you for the excellent advice! For the curious, the local AT&T Store had a queued service line, and after I reached the front it took only seconds to receive a new free SIM card and test call my phone. All info in the phone, even the list of incoming calling numbers, was preserved. Amazing. The service rep returned the original SIM card to me, but it's probably not worth trying to open it and see what's in there given it's hardly more than a thumbnail-sized sliver of cardboard.
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 09:29:44 +1000 From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: What could/would cause a SIM card to belly-up? Message-ID: <pan.2009.09.19.23.29.43.129810@myrealbox.com> On Sat, 19 Sep 2009 11:59:44 -0400, John Levine wrote: > SIM cards sometimes just fail. > SIM cards are just like all other solid-state memory devices, they all still have a finite amount of Write cycles before they fail. The technology is steadily improving in this area, so something made today has (as a generalisation) far more Write cycles in it than things made just a few years ago. There are Linux distros designed for solid-state drives that minimise the write cycles that are quite acceptable for normal hard disks, but will prematurely kill off solid-state storage. SIM cards fail, USB stick drives fail, MP3/4 players fail - all because they are based on an underlying technology that has a finite life when used. -- Regards, David. David Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have.
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:32:19 -0400 From: tlvp <mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: What could/would cause a SIM card to belly-up? Message-ID: <op.u0jan5y2o63xbg@acer250.gateway.2wire.net> On Sat, 19 Sep 2009 09:33:26 -0400, Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com> wrote: > I'm really scratching my head with this problem and Google > searching doesn't provide anything useful other than the > obvious "clean the contacts" and "apply more pressure to the > contacts" (either with scraps of paper or black tape). > > Either age and/or AT&T seems to have disabled and/or wiped out > the SIM card in my cell phone (Motorola RAZR V3) overnight. Is > it possible that AT&T could have remotely zapped the SIM due to > it booting up as Cingular and not AT&T and/or that I've had the > cell phone contract for so long that AT&T wants me to buy a new > phone? Yeah, paranoid thinking, but it IS AT&T :-) > > The good news is the phone's display shows "Check SIM" and not > "Insert SIM" (meaning it recognizes the card's presence) and the > phone claims it can still initiate emergency calls (e.g., 911), so > the cell phone hardware itself appears to be in fine shape (and > still looks brand new even after almost 5 years). > > I'll be visiting the local AT&T store(s) this weekend to "Check SIM" > in other phones. The symptom suggests it's only the SIM card that's > bad and a new one should be free/easy to get, so hopefully I'll be > back online sometime Saturday afternoon. > > If the existing SIM card will operate in other cell phones (I won't > know until Saturday afternoon), then I'm again (doubly) puzzled, and > if I have to buy a new cell phone, that will require the remainder of > this weekend to feature and price shop for something that is just a > phone and not a gadget overloaded with features/junk I'll never use. > > For what it's worth, the phone was working perfectly when I placed > it down on the same spot on my dresser that I have for nearly 5 years > now, and it wasn't until I awoke to an odd beep and saw "Check SIM". > > Any advice, anecdotes and suggestions are greatly appreciated. Anecdote, Thad, w/ another carrier: as an unintended consequence of "regular maintenance," a data-base entry for me and my SIM got "reset" on my carrier's systems. A call to Customer Care got that entry properly set again -- my IMEI and my phone number had gotten unlinked one from the other, and until they were relinked I was "dead in the water." Keyword/phrase for my carrier turned out to be "HLR" -- "Home Location Registry" -- that's where the trouble lay. For your carrier, neither that keyword/phrase nor the nature of the problem I describe need be of any relevance, of course, i.e., YMMV :-) . Hope you get it sorted out :-) . Cheers, -- tlvp -- Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP
TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom- munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to Usenet, where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Bill Horne. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. The Telecom Digest is moderated by Bill Horne. Contact information: Bill Horne Telecom Digest 43 Deerfield Road Sharon MA 02067-2301 781-784-7287 bill at horne dot net Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom Unsubscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Copyright (C) 2009 TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of The Telecom digest (5 messages)

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