Global Roaming: now much easier

Getting cellular data in each country visited used to be a real pain in the backside

Ever since cellphones became essential for everything, getting them connected to mobile data in each country you travelled has been as important as having money.

Unfortunately, roaming with your home (for me New Zealand) mobile carrier, was, and still is in many cases very expensive.

I’ve been travelling regularly for the last 30 years, around 100 countries so far.

Casual Roaming can be *really* expensive

12 years ago in 2013 my phone was pick-pocketed in Barcelona, and because my iPhone was locked and backed up into iCloud, I wasn’t too worried about it, purchased a new iPhone, downloaded all my data from the cloud and carried on with my holiday.

Unfortunately I’d forgotten about the physical SIM card, which could be taken out of the phone, and wasn’t locked with a PUK (SIM PIN Unlock Code).

The gypsy pick-pocket gangs who steal phones and wallets often need an Internet connection to commit fraud with stolen credit cards, and of course they don’t want to use their own mobile or home internet connection, as that could be traced back to them.

So, my SIM ended up in a mobile 4G hotspot, and huge amounts of roaming data were used on an expensive casual data roaming rate before my account was blocked. I think I may have set a record for the highest roaming data charge ever in NZ :-(

Nowadays the problems I experienced have been lessened with more reasonable roaming charges from Telcos, better alerting and capping systems, and eSIMs (Virtual in-phone SIM cards), which means that a SIM can’t be taken out of a phone and used inappropriately in another device.

The Old way, swapping physical SIMs

From the early 2000’s to about 2015, when I was travelling I would do the same thing as everyone else, which was the standard travel shuffle of buying a new physical SIM card in every new country, taking out my NZ SIM card (and trying not to lose it while it was out of the phone), and then swapping my NZ SIM card back into my phone periodically in order to get TXT messages from home.

Not ideal from the SIM shuffling perspective, but also several times I arrived at some foreign airport after midnight, with no cellphone provider to be found, and sometimes had to hunt for a few days for local phone company to buy a SIM card to get “online” again.

My USA mobile

For a period from 2016 - 2019 I had an apartment in Los Angeles, and so it made sense to have a US mobile number. Because phones didn’t have the capability to handle multiple SIMs in 2015, I ended up with two phones.

The thing about the USA is that they are a powerful country in terms of consumption, and so often they have plans and options that you just can’t get in New Zealand.

With my US number, for about $100 a month I was able to get a plan that had unlimited roaming in just about every country that you could think of, at full speed for the first 5GB, and then limited to 1 mbit thereafter, which was a convenience revolution.

There is real happiness to be found by being able to land in any random country, turn on your phone, instantly have mobile data, and not have to try and hunt for a local telco!

The only issues with my powerful USA mobile account for mobile roaming was that:

• It required me to have a US on-account plan, all year round, even when I’m not traveling. Over the last 5 years of COVID, I’ve barely travelled, but have ended up paying US$100/mth (NZ$150+/mth, nearly NZ$2k/year), so potentially NZ$10k to keep really convenient global roaming and my US number which I’ve barely used

• I only got 5GB per month at full speed, so when travelling if I’m careful to use Hotel Wifi, and be frugal with usage, then I can make it work, but it’s annoying having to ration data. I want full speed all the time everywhere.

What are eSIMs?

From 2018, iPhones got the capability to handle multiple SIMs (one physical SIM and up to 8 e-SIMS, and so my USA phone and NZ phone were able to be consolidated into a single device, which made life even easier.

If you haven’t come across eSIMs, you will soon. Basically it’s an internal, software configurable SIM card, meaning that phones can have multiple lines, and making setup via just clicking a link in an email.

Most Telcos worldwide are moving to eSIMs, and in the USA you can no longer buy an iPhone with a physical SIM card tray, all new SIM cards in the USA are eSIMs now.

For various reasons I now have 4 x SIM cards on my phone, with numbers for NZ, USA, Australia, and Saily for global data

2025: Easy roaming with eSIM providers

The new roaming solution is that over the last year or so, a bunch of Travel eSIM providers have sprung up. These include Airalo, Saily and others. I use Saily.

With Saily, you download their app, and once the app is installed, you can order a free global traveller eSIM which gets automatically installed into your phone. Once this eSIM is active, you can use the app to purchase and view data bundles for any country in the world, no matter where you are. No more visiting local telco stores for physical or eSIMs in new countries, just go into the Saily app.

Summary

• All cellphone SIM cards are moving to virtual eSIMS (in the USA they already are), this means that in 2025 you can set up a cellular plan just by clicking a link in an email or an app, without having to visit a mobile store to get a SIM card.

• From 2018 most iPhones (and most other models of phone), have been able to support a physical SIM and multiple eSIMs, meaning you can have multiple telephone numbers and companies on a single phone. (My iPhone can have 1 physical SIM and 8 x eSIMS, however only two can be active at any one time).

• When travelling, cellular data is essential, but it’s annoying to have to visit a local telco in every new country (sometimes you want data and you’re just in a transit airport that doesn’t have wifi for example).

• Several companies like Saily (which I use) now offer an App + Global roaming eSIM combo, which means that getting data in each country you land is as easy as pushing a button. With their strong buying power and global reach, the data prices are reasonable, and sometimes pretty similar to what you’d pay a local telco

Further…

The only issue that I’ve found with my new Saily eSIM roaming setup, is that sometimes the app doesn’t let you know you’re running out of data, and you need data to be able to top up. So then you either need to find wifi, or have another data plan somewhere else.

I caught a bus from Poland to Lithuania recently, then when crossing the border all of a sudden of course my data died.

So, for now I have the ultimate luxury roaming setup, which is that I use Saily for affordable, large amounts of local data at decent prices. If I run into a problem, then I can use my USA roaming data which always works everywhere, but just goes slow after I use 5GB in a month. (I also use my USA roaming data if I’m in a transit airport / country that doesn’t have wifi, and I don’t want to buy a whole new country plan with Saily)

I hope this article makes your future travel roaming easier and cheaper!