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"(especially not when traveling)"

In the EU there are no roaming costs so it's not any different when travelling.

That’s not quite true: There’s a limit to the amount of data usage your provider has to grant you at no additional cost, and mine enforces that. It works out to a 16 or so GB/month limit, on an otherwise >50 GB/month plan.

When I travel to Europe, my North America–only cell service doesn’t work at all. I definitely appreciate free Wi‐Fi at my destinations.

When I travel to North America, I get a 6 EUR/day data deal that transfers my EU 5G quota to the US. Demand better from your companies.

How does one “demand better” from a handful of giant corporations? Did you personally negotiate that plan with your phone operator?

Besides that, neither tethering (for reasons other than cost, mentioned above) nor international roaming (increased latency) are a perfect replacement for fast local Wi-Fi at this point.

It's that dreaded government intervention thing.

(also: increased latency for roaming?)

fwiw, T-Mobile works internationally, and esim data providers like airalo make it easy to have data at your destination.

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