After the rain storm and subsequent spiking of the electrical supply the SIM card router has failed. I took the SIM card out and put it into a spare phone. Will not connect to the internet via mobile data in any of our phones tried with all 3 but nothing so is it possible to fry a SIM card? I no little of SIM card technology. I also put my Lebara SIM card into the router to check if the router had failed or just the SIM card. Well that seems to have also ruined the Lebara sim card that went into my phone, will not connect to the internet via mobile data, however it thankfully does still work in my old phone. I have maticulously worked through the settings to make them identical but still no joy in my normal current phone only the old one???
Back to Leclerc tomorrow to see if I can get a replacement SIM or have to buy a new one.
It seems that they are incredibly fragile. This response from someone claiming to be in the know regarding the subject, lifted from the internet for you:
The wires inside a sim card are so incredibly thin and fragile that most people have no idea and take it for granted that they “work” at all.
Heat can easily burnout the wire. Cold and cause them to shrink and come off their end points of contact. Vibration can cause them to fair. Micro electrical surges can fry them, like a electrical fast blow fuse used in homes, cars, and all types of electrical appliances and devices. Even a slight twist or flex of the sim card can damage them.
At times, as others have also said, the sim card slot or holder contacts can also come loose from the rest of the circuit board and not allow it to be read by the phone, tablet, laptop, wifi hotspot and other devices that use sim cards.
Sometimes even the contact pads on the sim card wear out and no longer function normally.
Thanks Adam,
Yes, it’s possible to cook SIM cards if they are exposed to voltage spikes due to the equipment they were installed inside getting zapped.
You’ve giving the contacts on the SIM card a rub with one of those white plastic pencil erasers to make sure there’s no crud or grease on them?
You can wipe them with a make up pad with a very small amount of make up remover if you’re every careful.
Was the SIM for the router one that was supplied with it for router use? These often have different provisioning profiles to normal mobile phone SIMs and the phone does tell the network what it is when attempting registration on the network.
Did you power off the 1st phone before re-inserting the Lebara SIM after it had been tried in the router? Phones usually configure their settings based on reading the SIM at power up.
If the phone is an iThing, there’s an option to Reset Network Settings buried in Settings>General>Transfer or Reset iPhone>Reset
Popped into Leclerc and explained what happened, left with a new SIM card gratis! Hopefully all will power up soon, I think I did lose the data allowance though but only a few days left on this months allowance so not really an issue.