Announcing Librem AweSIM: A Privacy-focused Cellular Service for the Librem 5

I understand budgetary/pricing considerations are important to many. To each, and for each, they must speak for themselves alone. I, for one, really welcome this and will definitely be trying it with my L5 when it arrives. So great job Purism team. I imagine @Kyle_Rankin had a hand in this.

What a great addition to the portfolio.

3 Likes

Totally agree. I would look at this as a way to cut my home internet bill and cellphone bill. Combined using this I would say over $80 a month in every place I’ve lived. I mean provided you aren’t using your home network for internet services you self hosted (which I do), this would be a great thing for most people.

I guess the question really is, do I have to use the sim in the Librem 5? Could I put it in a LTE hotspot for example?

Good question, which I don’t think has been satisfactorily answered - and maybe Purism hasn’t done a lot of informal testing with other devices as yet.

I assume that the SIM will be a nano-SIM i.e. as suited for the L5. So the other device would have to be OK with that size of SIM.

That said, in my experience, SIMs arrive in larger-sized plastic carriers, so that even if your LTE hotspot wants a micro-SIM, for example, you should be able to insert the AweSIM in the hotspot provided that you have not already broken the SIM out for use in the L5.

That said, :slight_smile: I have even heard of people mucking around trying to retrofit a nano-SIM back into a carrier for a larger SIM (for older devices).

2 Likes

i can confirm that WORKS as i’ve done it several times already myself …

1 Like

I have a nano-SIM from a local provider that I can fit back in the micro-SIM plastic frame it came out of. I use that for occasional testing in an Android phone I have that only accepts a micro-SIM card. The trick is to keep it from falling out of the frame while inserting it into the SIM slot. See the diagram in this Wikipedia section for an idea of how that works:

__Tape.

or a dash of super-glue on just the parts that make contact. that way it’s not to much of a pain to detach them when you no longer need the frame.

Would be great to get in Europe as well.
Hopefully the price will come down a little as well over time. Could be a great tool to work remotely with the EU roaming rules, hopefully even internationally :+1:

All of those ideas are great but for user-convenience I hope nano-SIM is the last iteration of physical card SIMs, since all this mucking around is a pain.

2 Likes

if it gets any smaller you might find out it could easily get lost under your fingernail during manipulation …

2 Likes

What are the actual data limits? Could I use this in a hotspot/router in an RV? For BitTorrent and Tor? Heavy uploading?


MintMobile (T-Mobile reseller) is offering “unlimited” (35GB before slow down) for $30/month. Without any information other than whatever the device itself gives i.e. IMEI, Mac. Device was bought with cash from a person.

  1. Use a VPN (or Tor) to order a SIM
  2. Pay with Privacy.com
  3. Enter in whatever billing details you want
  4. Send it to a P.O. box with any accepted alias i.e. initials
    That’s it. No need to provide MintMobile your personal information. No need to use an app.

I’d be willing to pay no more than double that to support Purism and only if the data allowance is far greater. Currently, AweSIM is a wonderful idea but it just isn’t competitive to anyone but Verizon type customers who are paying egregious amounts. :frowning:

1 Like

Never heard of privacy.com, thanks for that!
Now to figure out how it works exactly!

Play on domain joke: privacy.gov

It’s gratis with an optional paid tier for extra features and furthermore for enterprise accounts. They don’t sell or share any information. It’s even possible to hide the payment details from your bank or creditor.
What Privacy.com does, is generate virtual cards to use that are locked to a particular website. The allowed payment is configurable up to $250 US.
Most places will accept it. I’ve only ever run into a couple that wouldn’t as it generally shows up as a pre-paid card. Sometimes you can message customer service and explain. YMMV there but, they are working on being accepted with all vendors. That being said, I’ve had the same issue with virtual cards from my bank.

2 Likes

I’ve seen YMMV in a few posts these few days. But what to they say in Metric countries? YKMV? (And is there such a word as “Kilometerage” ?)

1 Like

is NOT load without Java-Script enabled :upside_down_face:

3 Likes

Yeah, I wouldn’t expect any finance-related website to load without JS. Some of it is necessary for security and generation of cards I assume. However, it would be nice if the front page before login didn’t require JS. :confused:

i also assume it doesn’t load with TOR-browser … does it ?

Why wouldn’t it? I haven’t tried. Frankly, whenever I want to visit a .onion site or want a little extra anonimity I use a Brave Private window. :man_shrugging:
If anything, you can think of it as a trade off. Either way, you have to fund it so they very likely have some idea of who you are. But, that’s one point versus nearly every other you purchase from.

i mentioned it because i know for a FACT that TOR is just a firefox unicorn that disables some scripts on web-sites with the other p2p stuff … so yeah if disabling JS is unwelcome then TOR most certainly will make it impossible to load (unless you enable it).