Stephen's Thoughts

I recently updated my laptop and decided to go for a laptop with GPRS capability, thinking that I could share the data plan I have on my phone with the laptop.    I was looking for a copy of my SIM card that I could put in my laptop and share the data plan that I already have on my phone.

I was told by O2 that I could not do this as each SIM card needs to have a separate number and I would have to pay for separate data plan for the 2nd SIM card. This means that the 1GB data plan allowance that I pay for on my phone and never come close to using cannot be shared with my laptop. (I know that I can connect to the phones modem over Bluetooth and use the current data plan but that means that there is no point having GPRS on the laptop.)

I might be totally wrong here but does a SIM card not have a unique number that is mapped to the phone number that you dial. Would it not be possible to add two “SIM card ID’s” to one mobile account when one of the SIM cards is used for data only and not voice calls?

I had hope that our telecom companies had convergent networks that could correlate the data between the different services that they offer and take the data used from one data plan account.

If anyone knows of a way to do this or how a SIM card in a phone is mapped to a mobile number that you ring, let me know?  I would be interested to know if this is theoretically possible.