Telenor and Morpho’s WLAN-enabled SIM wins SESAME award

Telenor’s cooperation with Morpho e-Documents to create the world’s first Wireless LAN-enabled SIM card is now award-winning. This innovative product, called ConnectSIM, received the SESAME award from the CARTES & IDentification Congress in Paris, on Monday, December 6.

“We are very pleased to win this award along with our partner Morpho. Telenor started to explore the opportunities of the WLAN-enabled SIM card at an early stage and it is great to receive this recognition for our results,” said Morten Karlsen Sørby, Executive Vice President, Telenor Group. “We believe that this innovative technology will create exciting business opportunities for mobile network operators, including our own operations in the Telenor Group.”

What is a Wireless LAN-enabled SIM?

The world’s first Wireless LAN-enabled SIM, ConnectSIM, allows the user of the SIM card to connect and communicate with all the WLAN devices, such as PCs, hotspots, game consoles, TVs and other connected objects. For the operator, ConnectSIM connects the SIM to the entire telecom ecosystem, enables new services and applications, and helps Telenor take on new roles in the highly competitive value chain.

A significant breakthrough for SIM cards

ConnectSIM was given the SESAME award due to its innovative nature. It represents a genuine breakthrough in the card industry and brings significant benefits to potential users.

“We are delighted to once again win a prestigious SESAME award. This is a testimony to the innovative spirit at Morpho and its technology partner, Telenor,” said Philippe d’Andréa, Executive Vice President, Morpho.

Practical application of WLAN SIM cards

With WLAN, the SIM card is able to communicate directly with other WLAN-enabled devices. This allows for a number of new applications that contribute to simplifying and enhancing the user experience and increasing the security the SIM card provides for mobile handsets. Here are three main categories of possible applications:

• Applications that require security: Examples of such solutions are payment, ticketing, physical access control and simpler log-in to Web portals.
• Applications with proximity detection: solutions where the user discovers close proximity to other devices and is able to communicate and control them (control of set-top box according to the user profile or control of M2M devices).
• Location-based services: Solutions based on WLAN positioning that can be used for indoor guidance, positioning support indoors or support for location-based mobile advertisements.

Facts about ConnectSIM

• The Wireless LAN enabled SIM card ConnectSIM is compliant to the IEEE 802.11b standard and it is designed to provide a radio range in WLAN Zones and home networks at a low power consumption.
• Applications may utilize features such as positioning, detection of proximity and data transfer. Combining these features with the security features inherent in the SIM card may give rise to new applications and new opportunities to users and mobile operators.
• Unlike NFC, which is designed for close range, WLAN enabled SIM cards can facilitate a much larger range of user cases. Some use cases will overlap with use cases that the NFC focuses on and/or complement them. WLAN enabled SIM cards is not a replacement technology for NFC, but enabler for a richer set of services.