More and more people are ditching carrier roaming in favor of travel eSIMs
More and more people are ditching carrier roaming in favor of travel eSIMs
Unless you live and travel within the EU. Then you can use your phone as much as you want and know that you won't get a higher bill than usual.
Unless you are dangerously close to a non-EU country and can't reliably prevent your phone from connecting to its networks
shakes fist at Andorra
Never thought of that. Scary though.
This time last year I stayed on Bardsey Island, off the Welsh Coast. There's hardly any phone signal on the island, but they warned everyone to turn off roaming on their phones anyway. It turns out that because of the mountain on the island blocking the signal from the UK, lots of phones automatically connect to Irish providers, and cost more than people expect
I've always been sent a text when I connect to the network of a different country. It happened immediately when I crossed over from France to Monaco, for example.
I'm always cautious about comparing the US to the EU too closely, but in this case it fits, as both are continent-wide common markets. If you "live and travel within the EU," it barely counts as international travel for economic concerns.
Let's look at landmass - the US is equivalent in landmass to 16 Western OECD countries.
I haven't seen roaming fees in the US for over 20 years. So you could travel 2500 miles and not once pay a roaming fee. Same with SMS - all messages have been included in my plan since at least 2005.
It's hard to compare EU to US with something like roaming. Very few Americans travel outside the US regularly, so we'd need to look at something like hours outside home area per year, or something, to be any kind of useful - and there's zero roaming within the US.
Also, you can go to Alaska/Hawaii and not pay roaming. Some plans include Mexico and Canada as well.
Yup. My wife went to Canada for a few days, so I bought a roaming plan. $20 and we were set. Yeah, that kinda sucks, but I've only needed to do that once.
If we go on a long trip somewhere, we'll probably get a SIM, but it just doesn't come up often.
Beware of Switzerland !
It's maddening that my telco will negotiate a roaming rate on my behalf, and it's 100x worse than what a random dude in a supermarket can sell me.
They bet on the fact that most people will pay their bullshit fees because they don't know any better.
Me in india paying 10 dollars for 3 months with 450 GB data and unlimited calls lol.
Western internet prices are insane
I pay that for 20GB, it's so fucking shitty having to be vigilant about your data spending, then they do a research here where they say most people don't spend the majority of their data. Of course we fucking don't, if you do you can't access ANY online service, you don't get shitty speeds you get no internet at all so most people don't risk it by going through the limit.
20GB is a lot though. I use about 1GB. I spend most of my time on WiFi, so I really don't need much.
8 USD per month for unlimited data (100GB FUP) and unlimited calls to all network. Including unlimited high speed data for social media and gaming, no data cap. Malaysia.
About $8.5 for 365 days with 60 GB data and 200 min calls in Thailand. If I need more calls, it's less than $3 for every 200 min (365 days, again).
Is this just a switch to eSIM from regular SIM? Travel sim cards have been a thing for at least two decades.
Yeah. Before your options were roaming or waiting till you get there to get a physical SIM.
Today I can get an app that will install the esim before I get to the country so I'm ready to go out the gate. Also pay per day options.
Rates seem really good this way.
Not as good as the local sim (in Asia not by a long mile if I recall correctly), but it's way more convenient. Then again, here we can get some daily limited (500MB-1GB, depending the country) data roaming packages for the equivalent of 1-2€ daily. If it's quite a few days I'd go local sim, it's a bit of a hassle the first day, but their data packages are silly cheap. I guess in Europe/US/Canada I'd consider seriously some Airalo or equivalent.
Heard Holafly 😉👍 in App Store is a money saver when traveling. You just have to make sure your phone is unlocked.
Basically just physical sim for home and eSIM for traveling as most phone today are dual sim (ie.. sim and eSIM) built in
eSIMdb is good place to find even more options :)
It's also the ease of it. I travelled to Indonesia a while back thinking I could pick up a SIM card once there. I didn't realise you have to register the phone itself for tax reasons (?) to white list the IMEI of the phone before buying a SIM card. It was loads easier just to buy a roaming eSIM after I arrived. In hind sight I probably could have got a better package had I shopped before hand but it got me out of a tricky situation.
Same issues in Turkye. You have to track down a shop and they'll fleece you because they flat out refuse to sell you the cheap options under various pretexts. If you use the SIM for 6 months you have to register your IMEI, and if you don't they expire and you have to do it all over again. So yeah, having an eSIM is a big improvement.
Most Canadian carriers do a "use your plan like you would at home" but the price for it is about USD 10 per day, which is a huge cost compared to many travel eSIMs or a local SIM/eSiM.
Yes, $15 CAD/day to "roam like home". I have an Orange eSIM that I can keep alive if I use it at least once every 6 months - with a local french number that stays mine. It costs me about $40 CAD for a 30 day - 20GB top up. My wife uses Nomad for data only, we both don't need local numbers, and it generally costs $12 CAD for 5 GB 2 week top-up.
So I figure about $60-70 CAD for 3 weeks travel virtually anywhere in Europe. Calls and SMS included (for one) without long distance charges. Compared to $630 for "roam like home" for two people from a Canadian carrier - doesn't matter which one as far as I can tell.
We both recently got new phones to be able to use eSIMs.
And the physical SIMs stay active. So my elderly parents can call my Canadian number if there's an emergency and it will ring through.
In fact, on our last trip to Rome, when we used a credit card at the hotel, it was refused and then seconds later I got a text from the bank asking for confirmation on my Canadian number. I had no choice but to text "Yes" back, and that single text activated roaming for the day and cost me $15.
Yeah the EU is just awesome for being able to just hop from country to country, it's the same with the wireless roaming as it is with your person.
Yeah, I keep that for emergencies (you only pay if you use it) and also turn my Telus on occasionally to check text messages and do two factor authentication (incoming texts are free), but CAD$15 a day to "roam like home" is more expensive than an entire month with a local SIM in many countries.
I hate having to use it, but when so many terrible services only allow sms 2fa it is mandatory to have as an option when travelling out of country.
In Canada the way to work around 2FA SMS is to have mobile data roaming off with roaming on, (then switch your sim card to your home number). The incoming text messages and leaving incoming calls ignored won't charge you. It will only charge if you use any mobile data at all, send a text, SMS, MMS message, make any call (including to voicemail) or accept any call (some charge for rejecting a call but won't if you let it timeout on its own).
Same as Australian carriers. Mine is $A10 /day (about $7 USD). If you're travelling for a long time the cost can eventually add up and it's possible to get some cheaper travel sims. But it's just so much easier to not do anything and use your phone as normal.
Big improvement from the old days of roaming.
Got a T-Mobile eSIM while travelling in the US last year to get around this. The eSIM was a great deal (can’t remember the specifics, but pretty cheap with a decent amount of data). I was making two trips to California and Georgia in the same 30 day window, so it was useful to have.
The only downside was that I couldn’t activate the eSIM before getting to the US, and LAX didn’t appear to have any WiFi while we were there (not sure if that was generally true for the time, or if it was just offline). So I wound up having to roam to get the eSIM, and to get a text message from the shuttle that was picking us up from the airport (as I had to give them that in advance, and didn’t know what my US number would be until I got there).
Still saved us some money, but it was a bit of a PITA to activate with no WiFi available at the airport.
Since way back in the 90s, everytime I stayed somewhere for longer than a week (or I really really needed mobile data) I would simply buy a local pay-as-you-go SIM for it.
This has been made even simpler to do with the advent of dual SIM phones were you can have a SIM for calls with your personal phone number and a different SIM for data.
Further, here in the EU ever since they passed some legislation some years ago, mobile operators can't charge extra for roaming within the EU so none of that is even needed anymore if you're just travelling withing the EU.
What exactly is the great advantage of eSIMs if you have a dual SIM phone?!
In some countries it’s not easy like walking in to a store and getting a prepaid card. You need to have an ID and a local address, probably to prevent bad events which use sims cards. A travel sim could be easier but more expensive.
eSIM is much easier and can be activated using an app.
Yeah, I wanted to do this in Iceland a number of years back, and they needed a local bank account in order to open one.
My Icelandic father-in-law helpfully offered to put it on his own bank account, saying he'd just cancel it at the end of the month. This was acceptable. Gave him like £10 to pay for it.
Went back two years later. You'll never guess what he'd forgotten to do...
What exactly is the great advantage of eSIMs if you have a dual SIM phone?!
eSim means you don’t have to go to a store to get a physical SIM. You can use a ‘SIM store’ app to get an eSIM for wherever you are.
Another minor advantage is that you don’t need a SIM PIN as the SIM is a physical part of the phone. So you only need to enter one code when you restart your phone.
What exactly is the great advantage of eSIMs if you have a dual SIM phone?!
If the phone supports a normal and eSIM at the same time, they are equivalent. Because in many countries, dual SIM phones are (and will be) harder to get than single SIM ones, so having eSIM at least allows that.
What exactly is the great advantage of eSIMs if you have a dual SIM phone?!
They are slowly phasing our sim card slots, my phone only has one sim card slot + eSIM. Without the eSIM, I'd be force to change or buy a new phone.
That's like saying that the advantage of DRM in media files is that consumers are forced to use it.
The only advantage for consumers I see for eSIMs is that they can be bought online and digitally delivered, so mild convenience, which is nice, but not quite as amazing or filling a great necessity as the OP tries to make it sound like.
Beyond that, well it creates new business models and is probably cheaper for mobile phone makers, which are advantages for others, but not for consumers since the barriers to entry in the mobile arena that make it prone to cartels aren't in the provision of SIMs, they're in things like radio spectrum licensing so eSIMs aren't going to cause a price revolution in that market.
Currently in Tokyo from UK, paid for an Airalo esim before I arrived, and I was pretty impressed with how cheap and easy it's been- and that's with 20gbs data, which I've barely used.
My service provider O2 would have charged me £7 a day with their O2 travel bolt-on, but would have still been my usual contract of unlimited calls, texts and data, just that the data would have been throttled a fair bit. This is a lot more reasonable than it used to be, but still would have amounted in a large bill compared to the one off $18 esim.
Used Airalo in the EU last year, only complaint was it took a few hours for the data to work reliably, but it was 100% after that. I’ve recommended it to everyone I know traveling.
I've used it in India last month. Same experience, definitely will use it again on other trips.
Thank you for posting, I never really pursued this but just downloaded Airalo for an upcoming trip and I’m really excited to not pay $10/day with my carrier!!!
Ah. I see you were contemplating Verizon global choice
Ugh yes, nailed it!
I love Airalo. I have used it in 3 countries and works without any issue. I even use it in the US when I reach my data limit as I’m not on an unlimited plan.
Size of card aside, the notion of getting local provider sims or pay-as-you-go SIMs while traveling has been a thing in Europe for at least 20 years.
Is there a FOSS implementation of esim any where? AFAIK all privacy/security rom need to download a proprietary component to use esim, and such component need to run as root (as of now).
I wonder if this is another HDMI situation where implementing a FOSS version would violate some NDA of some sort.
Well, this is a bit tricky to answer:
Huh, TIL, an esim is literally a sim soldered into the board.
Now I wonder, could something like the Pinephone FOSS modem firmware register a sim and resolve point 2?
I used to have to go buy physical sims and use a wifi hotspot when I needed internet in the places that weren't covered under EU roaming because the roaming rates were so insane. Now I spend a small fraction of that amount on an esim that lasts just the duration of my trip and gives me just how much I need, and I don't even have to visit a shop. I just do it from my phone. Massive improvement.
There is better: eSIM that let you buy cheap data anywhere in the world.
Revolut offers one, also ubigi which is even cheaper.
This way you don't even need to find out which operator to use in which country.
I just have a carrier that gives me free international data and calling, regardless of the level of plan.
I'm betting that doesn't work for every country in the world with unlimited data. If it did, I'd like to hear the carrier that pulled this off and the price of the service.
T-Mobile and Google both do it in 215+ countries for unlimited basic data (not 5G). T-Mo charges between $75/mo for that and $90/mo for 5G data internationally (not unlimited). Google charges $35/mo with unlimited data (doesn't guarantee 5G). It's not difficult for them to do or even expensive. Most just choose to make it more expensive.
I'm in Chile right now. I have a local phone number and 20 gb for 30 days. eSIMs are amazing. I paid by at least 4x, getting Movistar through an app before I left, but my phone worked on the tarmac and I got to spend my first day exploring, rather than looking for a mobile shop.
Kinda nice that Google Fi gives you global roaming at no extra charge. Too bad it hardly ever works and text messaging is a shitshow.
Still used a travel esim on my last trip just to be able to reliably use my phone.
Probably dropping them soon because text message reliability is already a joke at home with them...
Interesting that you’ve had such a negative experience with Google Fi. My job requires regular relocation around the globe plus frequent international travel. I have yet to visit a country where it doesn’t work for the ~10 years I have been with them.
If you have a pixel 8 I actually had to bring mine back because the modem would regularly just fail to send text messages or failed to do the proper handshake for a data connection
I'm using Roamless because the eSim is pretty cool, automatically swaps to whatever country I'm in, rates are near local prices, and the best part is it's pay as you go and your balance doesn't expire. There's plenty of other good services too, but they charge for a certain period of time while still being limited data. Some are unlimited which are pretty cool though, but haven't seen another service that's able to swap between countries like Roamless though.
The problem I had with products like Airalo is that if you are traveling and need to actually call a hotel, excursion, or any company in the country you are visiting you cannot do that with just a data eSIM like Airalo.
Sure you could use WiFi calling maybe but in my experience when I really needed to call someone I had to switch back to my original carrier and incur the $10/day fee.
There are certain esim providers that give you a number. Esimdb.com
free trial tmobile (esim)
I have never used an eSIM, but I'd like to know about them. Can anyone explain what are some reasons to use it?
I was in Japan 1 week ago. I couldn't get roaming to work with my carrier mint (which may not have been there fault, it's a long story) but I needed data or I would have no way to navigate Tokyo. I paid $25 for 14 days of unlimited 4G data in all of Japan, I downloaded an esim, boom now I have data on my phone again. Easy.
I did all of this on free airport WiFi.
And once u have a sim on ur phone u can switch which sims you have active at a givin time, which had no value to me, but could be useful for other, especially someone who may travel frequently.
I pay more than that as my regular rate.
The City pays me an $80/month cell stipend for a work phone and the only reason it even covers my work phone is because I had an old backup phone I was able to activate.
If it weren't a public job I'd just use it towards my regular phone bill, but I don't want my personal phone to be subject to Open Records.
I prefer to use my pocket wifi that uses sim card for data. Then I can share my data with my partner or/and friends.
So... What SIM do you use when you're in other countries?
Why would i use my SIM in other countries?
/s