The world is changing, and the days of paper maps and telephone booths are long behind us. We have lived through buying maps, then printing maps for the places to now having an App for that.
This shift has made smart phones become the quintessential tool for the modern-day traveller. From checking calendars, to verifying the ferry schedule, receiving notifications from the airline, ordering an Uber, or the daily question of where are we going to eat? Sometimes its just – Where the hell are we?
But, how do we try to keep our phone bill under control, I mean $7/day in the USA and $12/day internationally? While convenient, that adds up fast.
Thinking back 15 years ago, I’m amazed how improvements in technology has improved the daily life of travelling. Our first experience of trying to get a foreign data plan involved leaving our phone at some suspicious looking shop in the middle of the city so they could jail break my phone in preparation for a European SIM card. Then, while the local data plan was better, the coverage left much to be desired. This made booking this while driving down the motorway a game – can we complete the booking before we run out of data coverage?!
We started using eSIMs a couple of years ago and they have really worked for us. We have found that eSIM plans can work one of two ways; for example, one plan may be for 20GB that’s valid for 15 days, once you’ve consumed the 20GB the plan is done. Or you might want to have 2GB a day for 15 days, everyday comes with a fresh 2GB.
Some plans offer unlimited data, but only so many gigabytes at highspeed.
Things to keep in mind while shopping around
- Which country(ies) is the eSIM valid for?
- Which cellular network(s) will the eSIM use while you’re travelling?
- How much data do you typically use everyday?
- How many days do you want data?
- Some come with a phone number attached, many don’t.
- Does the eSIM company have an App? Download it if they do.
So far, we’ve used Airalo, Ubigi, and my current favourite MobiMatter. I find it has the best app and variety of plans in its marketplace. However, my loyalty is fleeting as the eSIM space is very competitive.
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