As I passed through Heathrow on my way back to Cape Town, I saw this billboard. I have known for some time that Intel have built GSM support into their new chipsets and was waiting for the first products to hit the market... and here it is. Dell have built a laptop with support for broadband where-ever you are and this is a big advance.
But what is really exciting for me is the convergence of mobile payments with computers that this technology allows. A SIM built iin a mobile phone provides for an effective vehicle to distribute secure elements. Any serious payment solution with aspirations to provide bank robust payment solutions should be based on the usage of a secure element in some format or other. This is why mobile payments utilising SIM cards are so powerful and of course secure.
With on-board access of a SIM card in a computer, this opens the door for very secure payment solutions. It will be interesting if any announcements based on this architecture will be forthcoming.