Orange has become the first mobile network to start using the new high capacity 512 Mb SIM cards with their mobile phones in France. The new SIM will be provided with the LG u8210 mobile phone.Mobile phone networks and users have long been requesting a larger capacity SIM card. The current size of a SIM card is just 64Kb with, at best, 32KB free space for storing. This means it has been impossible to store little more than a limited number of address book entries and a few SMS messages. The new MegaSIM, developed by M-Sstems, has a capacity of 512 Mb and is able to run substantially faster at 20 megabits/sec. The size of the MegaSIM is expected to grow larger still, to 1Gb this year and larger still in the future.

The increase in memory on the new SIM cards, will allow users to store and use, downloaded applications on which ever phone the MegaSIM is put into. At the momemt this has been difficult as often the digital rights management has restricted the software to the individual phone.

Phone manufacturers are now beginning to adopt the standard, but the new cards will function in current mobile phone models with just the normal functionality of an existing SIM.