For consumers, Apple's new SIM is fantastic. For carriers, not so much. The new card allows users to switch their carrier at the press of a button rather than having to swap their SIM card to one from their new carrier each time they want to use another network...
This makes a whole lot of sense for people who travel a lot, obviously. Why would you need to invest in a "Dual SIM" device when you can have as many as you want all on the one? It is perhaps the most game-changing feature of Apple's recent announcements, and yet it wasn't even mentioned at their event.
According to Apple, EE in the UK, and AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint in the US were all on-board with the plans... which doesn't seem to be the case. AT&T has decided they won't, in-fact, be allowing their customers to switch to other operators on-the-fly.
iDevice owners who select AT&T will be locked-in to the network and have the switching option disabled on their devices. If they want to move, they will have to do the "old school" method of physically removing the Apple SIM card and replacing it with a new network's.
AT&T spokesperson Mark Siegel explained to the inquisitive media: “With us you can change carriers with this iPad any time you want. It is an unlocked device. All you have to do is switch out the SIM in the device so it works on another carrier.”
When asked why the operator would force customers to go through this process, Siegel responded: “It’s just simply the way we’ve chosen to do it.”
This prompted a response from T-Mobile's controversial CEO, John Legere, who will always have something to say about AT&T's decisions. He took to Twitter with a series of 20 tweets slamming his MNO rival and voicing his support of Apple's plans...

EE, Britain's largest mobile operator, has introduced the ability to jump the queue on their customer service lines if the caller pays 50p. The controversial move is called "Priority Answer" whereby customers will be greeted with an automated message asking if they would like to pay the fee in order to get straight through to an operator.
Some outcry has been caused by the move due to EE's ability to delay customers getting through to an operator without paying money for the privilege. The network has 28 million customers in the UK and was formed through a partnership between T-Mobile and Orange.
Waiting in a queue is never the highlight of anyone's day; whether it's a wait in the post office or being glued to your phone. It's especially frustrating when you are in desperate need of assistance. A quick poll across our social networks asking whether you would cough-up the 50p charge has split opinion but more participants are unhappy with the move.
Many companies today are expected to provide customer support via social media. The advantage here is that all correspondence is in the public domain and service can be scrutinised accordingly with poor service likely to cause a backlash against the company. One respondent to our poll who is against paying for extra privileges says he would take to Twitter for this reason:
EE say they will be using the money to improve its service - we hope this includes enough operators to support the queue jumpers or we worry what's next. For example, would anyone be willing to pay £1 to jump the 50p jump queue? This is a concern echoed by another one of our respondents:
Twilio, who offer Cloud-based solutions for communications, believes EE are facing capacity issues which would be better solved through virtualising their call centres. TelecomsTech caught up with the company's Director of Marketing, Matt Keowen, to get some further insights on how EE could have used an alternate solution.
Keowen suggests that by moving to the Cloud like one of Twilio's clients, Amigo Loans, they could have presented significant cost-savings through better understanding of callers, the reduction of expensive equipment, and the ability to add caller-preferential features such as SMS.
Recently Twilio did some research on cost-savings by moving to the Cloud from legacy equipment. Keowen says: "The cost of an initial purchase is in the $4 million range for all the things which would be necessary. Those purchases also come with an annual maintenance fee, and that can be as much as 20 - 30% of the upfront hardware purchase."
Such massive reductions in ongoing costs would be better placed into more operators with more modern features which could prevent a call even being placed, you would think, and there would be a lot more happier EE customers today.