If you were one of the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the AT&T outage last week, it’s understandable that you’d be a bit angry at the situation. Thankfully, there is something that can help out if this sort of thing happens again, as you can stay connected even in the event of a massive network failure.
MWC 2024 has just seen the launch of a new resilient SIM, or rSIM for short. It’s a SIM card that is able to detect when there’s been an extended network outage, automatically switching to a backup carrier to keep you and your devices connected.
The rSIM is able to test the network connection every 60 seconds, and if it detects there’s been no connectivity after a pre-set amount of time, it will automatically switch over to a second backup network with its own independent infrastructure. The rSIM won’t start checking for the original network again for several hours, but once it detects the outage your connection will jump back to your original network.
So an rSIM isn’t going to magically stop AT&T from breaking their infrastructure at some point in the future. But at least you’re unlikely to notice when it does.
The most important thing about the rSIM is that it’s been built to existing SIM card standards — with no proprietary or custom technology that might affect compatibility. In other words, you can pop the card into any SIM card slot, and it’ll connect to the network as normal. The only difference is that it can switch networks when it detects a problem.
So when will you be able to pick up an rSIM for yourself? Currently the rSIM is still in testing, but a commercial launch is scheduled to happen this June. However, you’re not going to be able to utilize the network-switching tech unless your carrier supports it. That is where we all get our SIM cards from, after all, so if AT&T or whoever you’re using doesn’t want anything to do with rSIM, you’re out of luck.
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