Esim and International Travel: Let’s Dispel This Misconception

Apple’s iPhone 14 announcement earlier this week brought attention to eSIMs because not all iPhone 14 units in the US will have a physical SIM slot, but instead support eSIMs. Suddenly, this feature that was often considered secondary is on everyone’s lips. And just as it did with the 3.5 mm jack and the charger in the box, Apple is pulling the entire industry back. We’ll have SIM-only Android phones soon – that’s for sure.

There seems to be a general misconception among the digital inks floating around iSIM: People think that not having a SIM slot is too inconvenient for international travel, and that US operators will be profitable because you’re forced to. To use roaming on your US iPhone.

In my experience, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I have done over 15 trips in the last 18 months. I visited eight different countries and used free roaming wherever my SIM card allowed, but bought a prepaid data eSIM in four countries: Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey and Canada. And my personal verdict is undisputed: eSIMs are a win for travelers.

Let me walk you through the process of getting a data plan before you travel to Canada in early August. I opened the Airalo and Mobimatter websites, typed in “Canada”, bought the plan that best suited my two-week stay, bought it, and got the QR code in my inbox. I opened the SIM setup menu on my Pixel 6 Pro, started adding a new SIM, scanned the code, waited and waited a minute and…well, that was it. My phone now had an eSIM with 5GB data for 30 days in North America. 10, oh, let’s be generous and say 15 minutes, that’s all it took. And it cost me less than $20.

Once my plane landed in Canada, I switched the data to this second eSIM and made sure roaming was active on it. (Many of these SIMs have multi-country plans that only work in roaming mode.) I was connected even before I got off the plane. And I can always save and switch between multiple esims if needed.

Now compare that to the tedious process of researching domestic data plans and confusing local billing, finding carrier stores near your airport or hotel, queuing up, providing all the necessary documents, getting a physical SIM, activating and connecting the data plan, and so on. Browse hundreds of menus, messages or websites in foreign languages ​​for every small question or setting.

In many cases, a prepaid eSIM from sites like Airalo and Mobimatter will be much cheaper than a traditional SIM. The cheapest traditional prepaid SIM I could find in Canada was 50 CAD, compared to the $20 I paid for example. And when I went to Istanbul for a day, I didn’t need more than 1GB of data, so I got a cheap $6 or $7 EC.

Of course, if you’re planning to travel for several months, a proper data plan with a more traditional SIM may cost less. But for most travelers who can spend at most a week or two in a foreign country, the odds are in favor of ECI being cheaper.

The only caveat is that prepaid data eSIMs are not available for every country. More than 80 countries are supported by Eralo and Mobimatter, which covers a huge part of the world, but leaves many smaller countries behind. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a data eSIM for my home country Lebanon. In these cases, if your phone only supports SIMs, you need to find another solution. Or you can wait a little. Domestic operators will join the eSIM standard soon, whether they’re ready or not – an issue that has forced Apple to take the industry hostage and move in one direction.

And sure, there are many issues with eSIMs and the way some operators have implemented them around the world, but let’s not add to the misconception that they’re bad for international travel. In fact, they’re super convenient to buy and prepare for a short vacation, but somehow most of the tech industry hasn’t gotten that far.