This news nugget will have you smacking your forehead and crying "Why didn't I think of that!?" Sagem and Telefónica have taken a regular old cellphone SIM card, and stuffed a Wi-Fi radio inside. Even the name is obvious: SIMFi.

It works like this: You pop the card into a cellphone, and "SIM toolkit applets", essentially control software on the card itself, take care of settings and broadcast. The radio inside creates a hotspot to share your 3G HSPA connection via Wi-Fi. It is ingenious.

With the huge Telefónica as part of the partnership, you can expect a big push. And because this will work on almost any phone, and replaces something you have to have anyway - a SIM - there's no reason that this shouldn't be in every cellphone in the next couple of years. The SIMFi will be launched at next week's MWC trade-show in Barcelona, Spain, where we should find out dates and pricing.

Sagem Orga and Telefonica turn the SIM card into a Wi-Fi hotspot [Sagem]

Photo: kalleboo/Flickr