Standards Makers Adopt USB For High-Speed SIM: After a bruising standards battle, USB has been chosen as the way to increase the data speed between SIM cards and handsets. The technology could enable many IP-based applications.

Standards makers have finally adopted a technology for a high-speed SIM card-after nearly a year of heated debate and deadlocked votes.

The standard, which could eventually lead to rollouts of SIMs supporting Internet and other multimedia applications, last month carried the smart card committee of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute with more than 76% of the ballots cast. That's despite a last-ditch effort by handset makers to defeat the proposal, which they considered too costly and complex.

In the end, USB "Inter-Chip," similar to the technology used on PCs, enjoyed the support of all of Europe's major mobile network operators, including Orange and Telecom Italia Mobile, which backed USB in the second round of voting.

"First, it was important to have a high-speed solution," Ilario Macchi, in charge of SIM card development at TIM, tells Card Technology. "Without Orange and TIM, there would have been …