For travelers’ eSIM (paid), many people whom I asked, have recommended Airalo - https://www.airalo.com
I have no affiliation.
I have no affiliation.
I had a Google Voice US number for almost 10 years that I lost because I could not do a verification from another US number. I verified with Twilio once as I was able to make their product work and receive a SMS from Google Voice but I couldn't make it work the next time.
I had created that Google Voice number back in the day when those SIP apps were a thing which offered you a second number. (I lived in India back then and still am).
I wonder whether there's an international eSIM that I can have without paying a regular "keeping the SIM alive" fee or paying a really really low free and recharge it whenever I want to actually use the data or SMS or calls when I need it which is usually when I travel?
Does any of these providers a retainer SIM that is kinda "pay as you go but no need to pay just to keep a SIM to receive SMS or so"? I would definitely need receiving of SMS.
Through what was definitely a configuration error on their end, my eSIM stopped working after I added more data to my plan. So for a week, I went from WiFi to WiFi in contact with their support, while they kept asking the same questions over and over again. Is roaming on? Yes. Have you entered the correct APN? Yes. Have you tried all providers? Yes. Is roaming on? Yes ...
Eventually I called for a refund and they denied it because, despite not ever loading a single website successfully on the new plan, I had apparently consumed ~10KB.
I saw some Reddit users reporting similar issues with their support. So if you run into issues, I would recommend calling for a refund immediately rather than trying to get it fixed.
There are more than enough similar providers. I switched to getnomad.app after that.
But let's be clear: My issue isn't that their underpaid support staff didn't know what to do, it's that they apparently don't have the policies in place to just say "f* it. We don't know whats wrong. Let's refund or issue a new SIM". That would have been cheaper for everyone.
I just checked Morocco, and it's $31.50 for 5GB. I think I paid 7$ for 20GB or something.
Then again, I have a phone with a regular SIM card. Maybe the prices are comparable if you have a new iPhone with no regular SIM slot and are forced to use an eSIM. In my mind, eSims should be cheaper, since there's no physical component there, but somehow that doesn't seem to be the case.
I can buy the Airalo eSIM before boarding the plane and have it readily loaded when the plane lands.
I have the feeling that this will forever be true. Local SIM usually expect that people don't use their whole quota, while eSIM will
> With travel SIMs, what you're buying is convenience.
I guess I'm not the target market here. Spending 5 minutes to get a cheaper + better deal is worth it to me then overpaying for limited data to avoid having to talk to somebody.
They want to own the whole customer journey, be able to market/upsell other products, etc. That's why they directly sell service at rates far cheaper than they will let roaming providers access.
In France there is a telco called Free, that has vending machines for SIM cards all across the country inside of various kiosks.
It’s pretty great.
I was there recently for a couple of months, and I went to one of these vending machines. Filled out some basic info about myself and paid with my debit card. The machine gave me a SIM card that I then put in my phone and have been using since.
The amount of gigabytes was decent too.
I am in a different country now, but still in the EU. Here I can still use the same SIM, but the amount of traffic that that plan gives me outside is pretty low compared to what it gave me in France. For now it’s been ok though, because here I have fiber at home. When I was in France the AirBnB we stayed at didn’t have any internet so that’s why I bought the French SIM with sufficient amount of gigas to get my work done.
Anyway, this vending machine in kiosks system is awesome. More telcos should do that in other countries too.
That's also been the case for me, but I haven't encountered a local carrier that agreed to sell a prepaid eSIM. It was always a physical SIM card, and I didn't want to swap out my home SIM because I needed to be reachable via text. (Plus: FaceTime & iMessage get reset if you do that)
I wanted to get a SIM card in Albania and they were charging €20 at the airport. After waiting for like 30 minutes for their slow-ass service of 2 people ahead of me, I just tapped 3 buttons and left the airport, getting half the data probably. I wish I had done it sooner anyway.
You're basically "roaming" on the local carrier, and your APN route you through an Airalo server. Which seems reasonable, except the server is some random OVH VPS with all the downsides of a noisy-neighbor cloud environment, and it's sometimes even all the way in the US. (Not to mention your geo IP is wrong and region-locked websites fail to load unless you find some local free WiFi. Netflix is also wonky thanks to that.)
That's fine for some countries, but in my experience, roaming with my home carrier was somehow faster & more responsive (despite the APN being all the way in Israel).
Also, being able to pre-purchase the SIM card means you can immediately browse when arriving. When we arrived, the WiFi in Chennai airport couldn't deliver the OTP to our foreign phone numbers, so without the pre-purchased eSIMs we wouldn't have been able to get internet.
I don't like it that they charge such a premium, it makes having data as a tourist somewhat of a privilege. Also, local SIMs typically offer beside data also a local phone number, which can be really helpful.
I obviously don't like that the premium for an eSIM in a place like India is so high, but I think (having a brief look at esimdb.com) $20-30 USD for 10-15 GB is not unreasonable for the substantial portion of tourists to India who are already traveling from another continent [1], and considering it's in the range (±50% perhaps) of mobile data prices for a comparable plan in the UK or the US, I'm not sure it's that much of a privilege for tourists.
To be clear, I don't mean that the premium is warranted, but just that it may not be much of a privilege for many tourists.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/207005/foreign-tourist-a...
Then we agree on that :)
For sure, it's not a big dent in ones budget for most travelers coming from other continents. The eSIM rates are indeed not that different from local rates. Looking at it transactionally, the premium is easily worth the convenience it yields.
Most of what I dislike about it is that being nearly forced to take the eSIM makes me feel more like an outsider.
Previous time I visited I did manage to get my local SIM, even though it took a couple of hours to find a store which was capable - and willingness - to issue one. This time, the regulation change caused my SIM card to get stuck in bureaucratic limbo because of new and poorly implemented additional KYC checks.
I appreciated the chore of getting a local SIM card, because it exposes you to integrate somewhat. It leads to interesting encounters outside of the normal tourist bubble, not just the people but also a bit in how their day-to-day business works. As such, I would like to be able to recommend others to try to get the SIM for themselves too.
Besides this 'stay in your privileged tourist bubble'-feeling, it also feels wrong that the premium between local data rates and the eSIM rates are that high. Even though the value-add seems minimal for anything other than skipping KYC completely and being able to pay with international credit card.
That difference goes somewhere and - I worry - that by fuelling that niche it only incentivizes the eSIM providers to lobby for borderline impossible KYC checks on local SIMs, which they can bypass for anyone able to afford that premium.
That's a hard no. That's highway robbery. 2gb/day for a month with international calling was $8 with jio
I think many places allow you to get a very good esim deal locally nowadays.
That Firsty ad stuff actually sounds horrible. You're in a beautiful country, now watch this ad every hour or go offline. No thanks, I'd prefer to go wifi to wifi then.
They are becoming a dime a dozen. Increasingly I find you can download the carrier apps ahead of time directly and keep 3-4 esims around indefinitely.
I get sufficient data for about $5/mo in just about all Asian countries this way. Most of the airports, even tiny ones, have wifi now - and it takes <5 minutes to set this up. The folks at the airport try to sell you overpriced tourist packages (or in Vietnam sometimes its a sim that fell off the back of a truck, they clone 'em) but you can just insist on an esim or wait until you're in town.
Google FI also lets you pause service for 3 months, so I turn it on for 1 day here and there and the credits roll over. I might get rid of it but it's a good backup at a known flat rate ($10/GB).
The MobiMatter app that someone suggested above seems to be cheaper and also support normal 5G networks. It's been pretty reliable to me so far, i could recommend it.
Used Airalo recently on a trip to Switzerland. I think I paid 5€ for the cheapest plan and got a 3.5€ voucher that made my wife's eSIM 1.5€. Worked very well the whole time and everything was very smooth.
The standard EU free roaming does not cover CH, at least not on my plan, so I needed something like this.
i used ubigi in japan in singapore and it was really cheap and very good connectivity.