Over-the-air activation of a SIM card applet at a mobile phone

A method or apparatus for telephony services available to applications running on a virtual operating system on a mobile telephony device so that the applications can make use of the telephone functionality. The method establishes an HTTP or like packet switched communication link to a server and the server establishes an over the air (OTA) link to the SIM card, which is able to process the telephony service, such as placing a call or sending a short message.. The command may be for example a call setup command or a send short message command, and the corresponding functionality is thus made available to the calling application even though the virtual operating system, is unable to invoke telephone functionality directly.