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While O2's discount wing, GiffGaff, isn't offering the iPhone 5, it is providing instructions for those willing to take up the scissors and give their existing SIM a trim.

The step-by-step guide comes complete with a video, and shows how a traditional SIM can be cut down and squeezed into an iPhone 5. GiffGaff won't take responsibility for the wounding and downtime the cack-handed snipper is likely to incur, but the virtual operator will provide a free replacement for the butchered SIM.

The nano SIM, which was first pushed out by Apple but is likely to spread quickly, moves two contacts from the bottom to the middle of the pattern, but as those two contacts are reserved for USB communications, which no one uses, that's not really important.

The new SIM is thinner too, and GiffGaff notes that some reports suggest sanding down the back – though its own experience is that the iPhone 5 has enough tolerance for the thicker original.

GiffGaff reckons its unlimited data deals are ideally suited to the iPhone user, who'll have to shell out more than five hundred quid for the handset to avoid being tied into a different operator's contract. The chaps over at Hard Reg reckon even the cheapest pre-paid deal for an iPhone 5 will end up costing £781 over the course of a year, so £539 (for the handset) plus a tenner a month to GiffGaff should work out cheaper, assuming one has five hundred quid lying around the place.

But at least SIM snipping will give one something to do while waiting the three-to-four weeks for online orders of the latest iThingy, even if success won't be known until it's too late.

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