How the latest Apple announcement can save us travelers time and money on data plans
5:54 AM
Imagine this: you just landed on your destination, you open
your smart phone and you are being prompt to select a data plan from various
local carriers. No commitment, you just need to choose the best plan and set
the duration of your stay. Wouldn't you love to have this feature available on your device?
Saving you a lot of time and money and keeping you connected wherever you roam.
It was only a month ago when Apple announced the new iPhone
6, iPhone 6+ & iOS 8 and just a few days ago in a much smaller event, Apple
announced a new handful of products:
- iPad Air 2 – With better camera, reduced reflection, 18% thinner than the previous model… read more
- iPad Mini 3 – With Touch ID, 5MP camera, full HD video recording… read more
- New iMac – With Retina 5K display… read more
- New Mac Mini – With major HW improvement, it will beat the old mac mini by generation … read more
- OS X 10.10 Yosmite – With Redesigned interface, better iOS & Mac connectivity, new apps… read more.
- iOS 8.1 – With Apple Pay, Camera Roll & iCloud Photo library… read more.
Well … among the list of features of the iPad Air 2 hides
this one really neat feature, for travelers, which wasn't even introduced
during the keynote:
“The Apple SIM gives you the flexibility to choose from a
variety of short-term plans from select carriers in the U.S. and UK right on
your iPad. So whenever you need it, you can choose the plan that works best for
you — with no long-term commitments. And when you travel, you may also be able
to choose a data plan from a local carrier for the duration of your trip.”
Hopefully this feature will be available soon for more
devices (currently available for iPad Air 2 only) and involve more carriers
(currently available only with some US & UK carriers).
It is another turning point imposed by Apple on carriers
business models, as Apple (with the first iPhone) was the first mobile phone
manufacturer which didn’t allow carriers to make any changes to the device configuration
prior to its sale to the end user. More than that, it built an entirely new
ecosystem of free services in the form of applications which competes directly with
carriers traditional services (such as messaging, media sharing and even voice
calls) and now with SIM-less mobile devices the roaming business model is being
challenged, but further more as you will be able to change you carrier with a
click of a button.
I guess it will take time till this feature will be
available to other devices, but anyway it is a major move by Apple to
re-challenge carriers and empowers end users.
Nice one!
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