- Subscriber identity modules – SIM cards
- In the UK, we are used to all mobile phones having a SIM card in them.
The SIM card is our telephone number as far as most of us are concerned.
It also stores some of our contact details, the rest being stored on
other cards in the phone. It comes as a shock, therefore, to discover
that Japanese mobiles do not have SIM cards.
You can work out from first principles, of course, that they must have
some equivalent. After all, phone calls need to be connected and subscribers
need to be identified so that they can be billed.
And they do have some equivalent. The phone number is "burned"
in to ROM.
The provisions of dematerialised ID apply to Japanese phones just as
much as to others.
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