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back to article Facebook SIM brings social network to dumb phones

Personal Argentina is the first operator to deploy a Facebook-enabled SIM, bringing the social network to any GSM handsets, and into hitherto unexploited markets. Getting Facebook working on a SIM means using the SIM Toolkit commands, which limits interaction to a cascade of text menus, but it does mean that any GSM handset …

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  1. calagan

    Unexploited Markets...

    ...is the ideal choice of words when it comes to Facebook.

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  2. xperroni
    Stop

    Cute, but kind of pointless really

    Pretty much every feature phone sold in the last few years comes with a native Facebook client, or at least a mobile web browser. (I should know, I work for a mobile manufacturer and it's my daily job to test and debug these.) I doubt anyone who hasn't switched phones in the mean time – or can't buy into the just-very-slightly-more-powerful dumbphones that support these features and a halfway-decent data plan – will have much use for Facebook access.

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  3. exanime

    Not sure I get this...

    I come from Venezuela and the cellphone market there is 100 times more advanced than in Canada (where I live now)...

    Actually, visiting Venezuela in June 2008 I saw the first iPhone (jail-broken already) in Venezuela while people in Canada were still whining (or going to the US) for one... it's not uncommon for 13 year old (rich) kids to have Blackberries or iCraps...

    I know Venezuela is only 1 of the many countries in Latin America but I hear the same story from my other Latin friends in Canada...

    ...by the way, nobody in Latin America pays for "air time"... you only pay if you make the phone call... Maybe Personal Argentina can make something for us in Canada so that we don't get ripped as much as we do

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    1. Raz
      Reply Icon

      Switch to Wind or Mobilicity if they are in your area. Way better value. Not as cheap as SA, but not as bad as Robelus. I got a Wind plan for $40 with unlimited calls to North America, unlimited data (they throttle after 6 GB though - enough for me) and unlimited worldwide SMSes. No contract.

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    2. Luigi
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      youv'e probably never travelled to countries such as Africa or South Asia where most of the phones are Nokia 1600 or Nokia 1200 and SMS is the only way to exchange a data content.

      And for youngsters with smart phones, ask operators how many of them successfully connect to the data channel (because of incorrect data settings, or absence of data plans)...

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  4. dssf

    Don't be surprised if in about 3 years...

    This becomes a way for fb to "hook" everyone or ALMOST everyone into EarthBook... wait, EarthBook is a real site:

    http://earthbook.craigrozynski.com/

    But, say fb and "google+ with googlemaps" vie for government contracts to map every civilian and soldier who is not on a security lists. Each government could control its own level of access. At some point, if citizens opt in or not, just conducting a certian amount of 'travel" (digital, physical) or creating a large enough footprint means pretty much any government could or would track any human (or pet, tagged or carrying a connected or permanently tethered mobile).

    I bet that fb is moving toward becoming Earth's Human Behavior Modification System mod 0.5.

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  5. Luigi

    youv'e probably never travelled to countries to Africa or South Asia where most of the phones are Nokia 1600 or Nokia 1200 and SMS is the only way to exchange a data content.

    And for youngsters with smart phones, ask operators how many of them successfully connect to the data channel (because of incorrect data settings, or absence of data plans)...

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