Internal Verizon Memo States Dual-SIM Support to Come This Year

The current 2018 iPhone lineup technically support dual-SIM capabilities already — but for most U.S. consumers, they won’t be able to use it until their carriers roll out activations.

On Apple’s side, dual SIM support was activated with the release of the iOS 12.1 update. And while most major U.S. carriers said they’d roll out dual-SIM activations soon, there hasn’t been any clear indication of when exactly that might be. At least, until today.

Verizon has reportedly told employees that Dual SIM activations will officially be rolled out sometime in early December, according to an internal memo circulated among staff that was obtained by 9to5Mac.

That timeline is just a few weeks away. And it suggests that Verizon has ironed out the software kinks in using dual-SIM configurations on its network.

Back in October, PC Mag indicated that Verizon was running into software limitations for dual-SIM. Reportedly, when a user activated a dual-SIM configuration on Verizon’s network, it bumped the network speed down to a pitifully slow 2G CDMA network rather than the telecom firm’s standard LTE.

According to that report, network coverage could also cut out entirely in regions where Verizon only had LTE infrastructure in place.

Because of that, the carrier stalled the rollout of dual-SIM activations. But it also announced that it was working with Apple to resolve the limitations and would release dual-SIM activations when it was “confident” that they were fixed.

This latest internal memo suggests that Verizon has achieved that confidence.

As far as the other major U.S. carriers, T-Mobile hasn’t reported any technical issues but also has also refrained from announcing a firm release date for dual-SIM support.

AT&T, on the other hand, also nixed its rollout of dual-SIM activations when it found its own technical issue. According to a previous report, AT&T found that the iPhone Visual Voicemail feature wouldn’t work properly if a device had two active lines.

It’s not clear when AT&T will fix that software issue, or whether it will roll out in an iOS update or a carrier setting update.

Dual SIM capabilities in the new iPhone XR, iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max will let users keep two active cellular lines on their devices at once. While not popular in the U.S., dual-SIM is an incredibly in-demand feature in other regions of the world for a variety of reasons.