This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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
IMO they should have just made any roaming on non-EU-terms strictly opt-in. It’s madness that you can get billed ridiculous amounts of money just for being too close to a border or ship.
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'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.
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.
The rest of North America would like a word with you...
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.
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
Convert it into median wage working hours and it all makes sense
It only means that the prices are adjusted to get the most out of what people have, not that it costs what its worth
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?!
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?!
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.
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.
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!!!
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:
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 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...
