Technically known as SIM-AT (Application Toolkit), this is a menu that is built into many SIM cards and can be accessed through the handset directly.

Many of the mainstream networks used the SIM Toolkit to promote their services and to increase their accessibility. Many provide links to news bulletins, sports, weather and finance. Some would also allow you to dial important services like the RAC breakdown

On the other hand, most of the smaller or virtual mobile network operators neglected support for the SIM AT toolkit. Virgin Mobile was one example of an MVNO that implemented a SIM toolkit in their service, but others such as 3 (Hutchinson 3G) and ASDA or Tesco mobile don’t implement this, mainly as they are promoted as a budget-orientated mobile operator

BT Cellnet / O2

The predecessor to O2, this Sim card dates to around 2000/01, shortly before the rebrand to O2. The menu appears as ‘My Services’ with BT Cellnet being the first item that shows up

• Callback901 – This was a shortcut to O2’s voicemail service and simply dials the voicemail message center, which works the same as dialing 901
• 1471 – tells you who the last number that was dialed
• Customer Care – Main O2 customer service line
• UK Directory
• Int Directory
• Dictation Line
• Talking Pages – I think this was the speaking version of the phonebook but im not 100& sure
• RAC Breakdown – Dials the RAC, useful if your car as broken down
• AA Breakdown – Same as above, but dials the AA instead (AA is a breakdown company, not alcoholic anonymous)

From an older BT Cellnet SIM card

T-Mobile

Not sure how old this Sim card is or what year it dates from. Compared to the menu on BT Cellnet it’s a lot more featured, with many options leading into a submenu. When selecting an option, the phone will send an SMS-like message which relates to the request.
On most handsets, the menu appears as ‘Interactive’

• Fun
  • Horoscopes – Gives two options, Romance and Outlook and lets you enable a daily message that tells your horoscope, probably for an additional charge
  • Humor – Gives options for Jokes, Chat-Up lines or Voicecards. Jokes gives you options for Silly or Adult jokes which then gives a warning message that you must be 18 or over to access
  • Pictures – relates to MMS and lets you enable picture alerts, options including Babes on & off, Gossip on & off and Footie. Yes, it’s actually spelled like this in the menu.
  • Entertainment News – Options here is daily on/off which controls daily SMS messages being sent in relation to entertainment news, an option to get the latest news once and separate options for soap and film updates. Useful if you want the latest from Eastenders or Emmerdale.
• Info
• Daily news
• Weather
• Lottery
• Call Traffic
• TV – gives two options to see What’s on now and Soap Update
• What’s nearby – several options, bar, Hotels + B&Bs, Eat, Taxi and Cash Machine
• What’s On – Cinema, Club, Music and Comedy
• Streetmap – Send a map to selected compatible Wap push devices
• Finance – Options for Shares, Exchange rates or financial news
• Call Leisure Line – Calls the Leisure line
• Music
• Ringtones – send a WAP link to download more ringtones
• News – Various options for Charts alerts, Pop news, and New Releases, these would be text alterts being subscribed to
• Chat
  • Join
  • Chatrooms – Lists chatrooms or to manually enter a chatroom
  • Match and chat
• Sports

Vodaphone

On this SIM card that dates from 2020, this still has a few menus that are accessible.

• My Vodaphone: Gives options such as TopUp, Balance, Customer Care, Directory Enqs, Voicemail, My Subscription and Voda Stores. Some options will be hidden depending on the type of tariff (Pay as you go vs Pay Monthly)
• Balance: Gives you your current account balance, does not show on pay monthly
• My Number: Shows your current phone number
• Menu prices: View Prices and T&Cs
• Sport: Various options consisting of Sky Sports, Sports News, Football, Rugby, Eng Cricket, F1, Horse Racing, Golf News and Tennis News.
• News&Weather: opt into breaking news alerts, or just UK or World news with additional options for tech, lottery and local weather. Cost is 12p per alert.
• Entertainment: Two options here, TV Tonight which shows TV listings, and Joke of the Day.
• Horoscopes: Set up SMS or MMS notifications for your horoscope priced at 1Pnd per week, or 12p for a daily message.

Virgin Mobile

Virgin was one of the first virtual mobile operators and ran on top of an existing mobile network. Virgin offered its SIM-AT menu as ‘Virgin Xtras’

• Top-Up
• Help
• Shop
• Offers
• Travel – Options are Traffic, Book Virgin and RAC Red
• Music – options are Jukebox, Buy and Radio
• Going Out
• Staying In
• Voicemail – Options are Call? and Divert

Most of these are WAP links to the selected service, they don’t seem to bring up a submenu of sorts.

Conclusion

From looking at most of the options listed above, many relate to obtaining information for a specific subject. Like if you wanted to subscribe to breaking news alerts, or sports news alters for a specific game. Many of these carry an additional charge and operate as an additional revenue stream. These would have made sense back in 2000 era of mobiles as WAP was still an emerging technology so getting breaking news in the form of an SMS message would have been a desired feature.
Now, most phones come with news apps that support breaking news nominations, delivered through the phone’s data connection. The remainder of the functionality can be replicated using the operator’s app, if they choose to provide one for the smartphone’s platform. For feature phones that run the KaiOS platform, this may not be possible. Still, Android handsets support SIM-AT which appears as a dedicated app if the sim card supports it.

A problem with SIM-AT is some manufacturers implement it differently in terms of accessing it, on many Nokia’s you can access it directly from the main menu, but on Sony Ericsson models it’s buried within either the Entertainment or Services menus. For network operators, this means they cannot give direct instructions without having the customer refer to the phone’s operator manual.

Orange (Now merged into EE, now part of BT) also offered a similar service, ill document and upload when I get access to an older Orange SIM card.