The Indian telecommunications authority, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), has instructed eight messenger services to implement a permanent binding to inserted SIM cards. Affected are WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Snapchat, ShareChat, as well as the Indian services Arattai, JioChat, and Josh. According to the directive, the companies must ensure within 90 days that their services can only be used with a physically inserted SIM card.
Do you want new messenger services? Because this is how you get new messenger services.
As someone who only uses a phone without a SIM card this would suck for me.
Are many new phones being made with Sim slots? I assumed physical cards were fading.
Pretty much all phones still have SIM card slots.
It’s really mostly North American models that have been releasing with no SIM card slots lately, but they usually release it in other markets with one.
I think a bunch still do. I don’t have it because I just purchased the phone with no cell plan. I just use wifi and if I go out I use my work phone Hotspot to provide wifi to my personal. I use Google voice so I have a number and some of those chat apps that my friends use to keep in touch. Im in my 40’s and have never had a cell phone bill still. Outside leaving the house, I honestly cant believe people are paying $60-$100+ dollars a month when you can get everything it does these days off wifi. For the minor inconvenience ive ran into sometimes I still think it’s worth it for the price.
I just pay 15/month on mint for the lowest plan. Just so I can get directions and basic Internet while I’m out.
It looks like that plan allows 35gb of data use in a month before it throttles, I don’t think I’ve ever used that much mobile data.
The $15 plan used to only be 2GB, which was honestly still enough for people that only use mobile data sparingly.
Yes, that’s adequate for someone who knows how their phone works and doesn’t stream video while out and about.
I don’t think I’ve ever used that much mobile data.
I only use mobile data, but…
My record so far is 591GB in a month.
Last month I used 451GB, this month (since Nov. 16th) I am so far at 347GB.I’m sure I hit numbers like that on my DSL.
Isn’t that like a month’s rent in some parts of India?
Pretty much all phones still have SIM card slots.
It’s really mostly North American models that have been releasing with no SIM card slots lately, but they usually release it in other markets with one.
So does it just mean you can’t use any of those apps if you use them on PC/tablet? Wonder if that would be big enough of a driver to push people to use something else for communication
The apps already use your phone number, on pc you connect to your phone app. But it used to be possible to change your account phone number, and that’s what they seem to have blocked.
My 4g router has a phone number but you can’t install APKs on it.
US iPhone have no sim slot. How that work in inida?
Esim is also considered as Sim inserted. During registration apps sent a SMS to mobile number, but with this the device will sent a SMS out to the chat platform. This ensure the number is verified. The message sent will be automated by granting the app SMS privileges. The Sim inserted/loaded will be noted by the app. During app startup it will check if the Sim inserted or loaded as esim is same Sim as before. Then it will work, else a Sim change warning will appear.
Source: UPI payment apps in India already mandates this approach. They want all other apps to do the same.
eSim
physically inserted SIM card
So this is why Whatsapp logged me out of all my accounts with Indian telephone number yesterday and won’t let me back in…
This would kill bridges like slidge. They authenticate to WhatsApp using the web interface and that token lasts about two weeks before you have to relink it. A limit of six hours would make it unusable.
I think that SIM physical presence in the terminal adds just a bit more of difficulty to the main abusers but a lot of pain to the non ones, the apparent bind to univuqous real identity is illusory and fragile, by now we should assume WhatsApp and Telegram as potentially anonymous and spam as a mail account…
What do they achieve from this?
Whenever you don’t know, the answer is money.
Control of dissent, rather.
