SIM Cards Explained (Simply)

If you haven’t heard, TextNow is on a mission: to connect people for free or as close to free as possible. And with the latest launch of Free Nationwide Talk & Text service, we are doing just that. Unlimited calling, unlimited texting, pretty much anywhere in the U.S., for $0/month. There’s one only small requirement to get onto this free service. You’ll need a tiny piece of plastic that will connect your phone to the Nationwide Sprint Network — it’s called a SIM card.

Maybe you’ve never heard of a SIM card. Or maybe you’ve heard the name, but don’t know what it does. No judgement. For such a common accessory in 2020, SIM cards are still a mystery to a lot of people who use them every day.

SIM stands for Subscriber Identity Module. But to all of us non-techies, a SIM card is a little piece of plastic you can put into your smartphone that enables you to connect to a mobile phone network.

“Why do I need to connect to a mobile phone network?”, you might be asking. If you have ever wanted to make a call, send a text, browse the internet or social media without being connected to Wi Fi, that requires a SIM card. Without a SIM card you would need a WiFi connection to do all of those things. With it, you have the freedom to leave WiFi and still have those capabilities — it’s that simple.

Now that you know what a SIM card does, here’s what it doesn’t do. A SIM card does not act as a storage place for information saved to your phone. A common misconception is that a SIM card saves your phone’s data, but that is actually the job of an SD card.

Want the very simple explanation? A SIM card connects your phone to a network, an SD card stores your information. And that’s all there is to it!

So if you have a phone laying around that you’d like to put to use for FREE calling and FREE texting, but didn’t know how, you can make a one-time payment of $9.99 for a TextNow SIM Activation Kit.

Once it’s delivered, you just pop it in, tap on “Free Coverage” in your app, and start calling and texting for free with no strings attached! See, it really is just that SIMple.