kenfretwell.com

I've recently purchased an ipad. Its great for consuming media on. One thing I didn't buy was a data plan. I've allready got a not very often used Three mobile broadband dongle. Its got around 12Gb of data left to use up, so fitting it into the ipad had its benefits. Problem is, the ipad accepts only microsim format cards. Solution, trim the sim down to size and you're good to go. There's no going back once you've trimmed it down, but i'll just get another sim on a new data plan once i'm done with it anyway, so no problems there. There are a few how to's floating around on the net, i've done it a bit differently (easier to cut it up with a good pair of scissors!). Heres how its done.

You'll need:

1. A heavy duty pair of scissors, or something sharp to cut the sim card with. its only plastic, but you want to cut it in one go. going over and over to make a cut takes time and introduces more risk of mucking it up. If you have used your pair of scissors to cut up an old credit card in the past, then they'll be up to the job.
2. A good eye for cutting straight!

The three sim card I have has a smaller set of pads (the gold bits). Its missing the outter narrow pads on the top and the bottom. If your sim has these, get ready to cut through them, but no need to worry as they dont actually do anything.

Make sure when you're trimming your card that it fits snuggly into the sim tray, and that the pads arent contacting the sim tray (or it wont work). Remembers its always easier to trim a little and then trim some more, its very hard to trim too much and then try sticking it back on!

Disclaimer:

As with everything you read on the net these days, follow this at your own risk!

Step 1

Grab your sim card. We need to trim the sides off it first. as you can see from the photo below, start with the sides needing the least amount of trimming. The bottom trim strip is about 1mm wide. The right hand trim strip is around 1.5mm wide.

Step 2

You'll now need to trim the top section. This is the important bit. I've trimmed off a strip about 2mm wide. if you are unsure of how much to trim, you can cut the first of the corners off the bottom right hand corner, so you can slip it parlty into your ipad sim tray. from here you can get a good idea of how much to trim off. the sim card should, after trimming, have a height of 12mm:

12mm in height:

Step 3

Next you need to trim the largest piece, the end piece. You need to now make your sim card approx 15mm in length. Once youve done this you're allmost done.

Step 4

You now need to cut the large triangle from the corner, so it sits the correct way around, and trim the other corners so they fit into the sim tray's rounded edges. Its easiest to cut off simple triangles, rather than cutting tiny little rounded corners!

Your completed micro sim card should fit the tray as follows:

Check and admire your awesome handy work

The sim pads dont touch the sides!

Now all you need to do is plug your sim tray back in and configure your connection. All I needed to do was add my APN into the settings>Cellular Data> APN field.

Here are some of the common APNs for aussie sim cards:

Three (prepaid) - 3services

Three (contract) - 3netaccess

Telstra nextg - telstra.iph  (I modded one of these sims for a friend at work with great success)

all of these sims needed no username, no password.

Hopefully this was useful to you!