ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Thibaut Dedreuil_monet <dedreuil@xxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,

I just wanted to share with you my experience with the lack of Sim toolkit on UT.
I have reported Bug #1323837 in May 2014 concerning the lack of sim toolkit on UT. Few people have already acknowledge that this is a problem on the bug report but from my recent conversation with a UT developper, full SIM toolkit support is not even on the roadmap of UT. I am hoping by this email to convince the product team to reconsider the inclusion of sim toolkit support on UT and accelerate the development of the simtoolkit support. 

My network provider is a cheap MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) on the name of vectone mobile.  http://www.vectonemobile.co.uk/
When i am abroad, i cannot use my phone network ( no call, no data, and no location) if i do not have a basic sim toolkit support as i need to change my sim parameters via it to enable me a network connection. 
For a short while I used my girlfriend's phone in order to set my sim card correctly and was able to use it after on my UT phone.
Not having the sim toolkit on my UT had the effect on me missing some very important phone calls when i was abroad and i personally feel i should not have to carry a second phone to use my UT abroad. I was able to do this on all the previous phone i owned as all supported SIM toolkit while UT do not.

While i understand  that this is a very ancient technology and its not used in all country, Sim toolkit support should be considered as a priority as some network providers are still using this old technology.

Following the bug report this also used in Norway for banking and some users considers this has a must have in order to be able to use a UT. I quote "Sim-toolkit is also used by BankID in Norway. There is no way I can use the phone as a daily driver without this since it is used to access my bank and many other services.
I want to add that this is supported by all other smartphone OSs, Firefox OS even. This should be a requirement."

I am hopping that this email might be able to speed up on a decision on enabling a proper basic sim toolkit support on UT. While i wish i could help develop a solution for this, i do lack the skills to do so.

Kind Regards.

Thibaut


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Thibaut