The original note, as written at the time
ONE SIMCARD SYSTEM. Instead of having different simcard numbers for every network, the network simply maintains separate infrastructure but the estimates themselves are made by UCC. You can purchase a different service with the same SIM card instead of having a separate SIM card for every service.
Ongoing development
Instead of a separate SIM card for every network, one card that can buy service from any of them — with the networks keeping their own infrastructure and the regulator setting the terms.
The physical problem is obvious to anyone who has held three cards and a paperclip. The economic problem is worse: the SIM is the lock. Once your number is on a network, moving it is a process designed to be tiring, and the tiredness is the product.
The technical answer already exists and is badly deployed. A number can be portable; the identity of the subscriber can live in the regulator’s register rather than in the operator’s vault. Then the card becomes a credential rather than a contract, and the choice of network becomes a choice, made monthly, on price and coverage.
What would change is not small. Operators currently compete for subscribers once and then compete for nothing. If switching cost nothing, they would have to compete continuously, on the things people actually care about: whether the data is fast at seven in the evening, whether the call drops on that stretch of road, whether the bundle is honest.
The regulator’s role is the part that makes it work and the part that makes it political. Somebody neutral has to hold the number, publish the quality, and enforce the portability — and that body has to be immune to the operators it regulates, which in most markets is the whole difficulty.
There is also a rural argument that rarely gets made. A single credential means a person in a village can use whichever network has a mast near them, rather than choosing a network and hoping.