Sophisticated GSM-based car communications systems have always required a second SIM card to operate but now Nokia have developed a system that will communicate with your Bluetooth mobile phone and use the subscriber details of your mobile to make calls and to log onto services such as Nokia Smart Traffic products.
It’s all about making the services more convenient to access for users – you can leave your mobile phone in you briefcase or bag, yet the in-car systems will soon be able to use Bluetooth SIM Access Profile (SAP) not only to get onto the network but read and write data (such as your address book and schedule) to the phone. It will also lead the way to more convenient (and legal) hands-free calls from cars. Presumably, a home version of this system will be on its way – the system is not too far off the very product used in vending machines in Finland.
The in-car system will be presented at the 8th annual Nokia Mobile Internet Conference, 29 – 30 October 2003, in Nice.
SIM Access applications
Nokia
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.
Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.
At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.
After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.
These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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