SIMFi Turns Any GSM Phone Into a Hotspot

SIM card provider Sagem Orga and wireless carrier Telefonica have teamed up to create something that could push cellular networks even further toward overload: the SIMFi, which is a SIM card coupled with circuitry to allow the card to create a wi-fi hotspot.

Expected to be announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week, the SIMFi is described as follows:

An embedded WLAN modem in the SIM card, driven by the SIM toolkit applets running in the SIM, will enable Telefonica to broadcast High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) Internet access through Wi-Fi to notebooks and netbooks. The new generation USIM card “SIMFi” can be inserted in any type of classic handset to act as a universal and interoperable HSPA/Wi-Fi router for any device.

Obviously you can turn your smartphone into a wi-fi hotspot (at least, assuming you have the proper data plan, proper instructions, and perhaps have a jailbroken device for those AT&T iPhones that still don’t have tethering despite all the AT&T promises.

Nicely, you could run this on any GSM phone, since all the “applets” necessary to set up the network are on the SIMFi card itself. That might even mean Apple can’t block it on the iPhone (insert sarcasm here). Expect to see more details at MWC (perhaps even including pricing and ship date).