For all ye secret agents in suburbia…

Legend goes that Bill Gates, at a computer trade show in 1981; had said – “640K ought to be good enough for anybody“. With MicroSD card capacities at 128 GB now, this was regarded as a short-sighted statement…but there are those who say it didn’t happen.

That was about storage, but this is about communications. While dual-SIM phones haven’t quite caught on in the US yet, there are all the rage – and quite the regular norm of daily life, in almost everywhere outside the US. As an interesting use case that goes beyond the intuitive “One SIM card for home and the other for work” scenario that most envision when thinking about a dual-SIM phone, a recent trip to India had me talking to many who said that they used one SIM card for (incoming) calls, and the other SIM card for a low-cost fixed-rate data plan so that they could use WhatsApp. This saved on the cost of text messaging by using WhatsApp, without getting them into a variable / fixed rate data plan.

Most of us have carried two phones at some point in our work lives…and disliked it once the notion of carrying & protecting both at all times set in. Use cases like the one above, coupled with the drop in cost of dual-SIM phones, underscore the need for the US getting hip to dual-SIM quick.

Although…I wonder how the average Mobile Device Management solution will deal with a dual-SIM phone…

So, two SIM cards seems reasonable. One for home, the other for work. One for calls, the other for data. Sounds about right.

I just saw a Groupon deal for a three-SIM phone from Motorola. Ostensibly, the use case is for when one is moving through multiple geographies quickly, and one desires to use a lower-cost local calling plan on a locally-issued SIM, with the added benefit of letting local contacts reach out at a local number rather than making an international call to reach you in the next room because of your fancy global calling plan. Much like, say, your average jet-setting C-level person / James Bond / Jason Bourne would…although they typically have budgets that can stretch bigger than a $40 phone. Just sayin’..

But, seriously…three SIM cards? One for home, the other for work – and the last one for…your, um, friends? Very Bruce Wayne of you – and since he recently lost his billions – I’d head over to that awesome Groupon deal in a hurry.

Doesn’t look bad…very retro-chic BlackBerry-esque look. I’ll pass, but I see a dedicated Facebook button, so it must be…cool.