Had nothing to do with the Chinese government. It was some rich kid doing a “startup” that burned something like $100M on a dumbass idea before going bankrupt.
Before going down the eSIM route, make sure your phone is not carrier locked. If it is carrier locked, then you can only use a sim or eSIM from your carrier. If you are paying off the phone in installments, or you got it free on some deal, then there is a good chance it is carrier locked.
Your carrier or the their website should be able to tell you if the phone is locked, and they may even unlock it for you if you fulfilled the necessary parts of your contract.
The other way to test if it is locked is find a friend that uses a different carrier, and put their sim in your phone, and see what happens.
I was all set to do eSIMs last summer in the UK, but ended up doing AT&T’s International plan instead, for two reasons. My phone is carrier locked, and with a whole bunch of people to manage, it was easier to just use our native phone numbers. I think it was $12/day for the first phone, and $6/day for other phones on the same account. After 10 days of use, additional usage is free for a period of time.
It was very easy. I just used my phone like I was at home, contacted people like I was at home, and then went “uggh!” a month later at the big phone bill.
I’m a huge fan of Fi for this reason. I’ve used it in Thailand, Tanzania, Barbados, Mexico, Antigua, St Maartan, Dominca, Tortola, Qatar, and probably others I’m not remembering right now. It’s awesome to get off the plane or boat and have cell service. I can keep in touch with friends back home, look up local restaurants, use maps to find things, and so forth. I even turn my hotspot on so my travelling companion gets WiFI access on her phone.
To complicate things further, keep in mind that with eSims you can/would use them for data only, keeping your regular sim in there for phone calls. Your phone should have settings to tell it which service to use for data and which to use for calls and texts. And you can switch on the fly.
For my T-Mobile account, phone calls while abroad are 25 cents/minute in most countries (sms text being free), but the data can get expensive outside a few countries. So I’ll use eSim for those. For our upcoming trip, I’ll buy a data-only eSim for Japan, and I already have a different local sim (with voice) for Australia because we have friends/family there and I want them to be able to call us at a local number.
Verizon appears to be bumping the price up to $12/day, but it’s typically what we use. We’ll be in Morocco for 10 days coming up and I’m considering using the eSim route this time.
If you have an unlimited plan from Verizon, definitely check into the option of changing your plan for the month (or just for the time you’re there) and then changing it back. Might be cheaper than the eSim or the TravelPass.
In the month between comparing the price of eSIMs and AT&T’s international option, they raised the price from $10/day to $12/day.
This is the same convenience AT&T’s (or any carrier’s) international plan offers. Just use your phone, and don’t worry about it. The bill is future you’s problem. On AT&T at least, it is capped at $120 month, which is 5-10 \times the price of a month long local SIM/eSIM, but is probably worth it for someone who is not reasonably tech savvy.
This is one way to do it, but depending on your phone plan, may get very expensive. AT&T (the one I’m familiar with) is $0.50/text and $1 or $2/minute for calls unless you use the $12/day option.
This is all needlessly complicated, because the phone plans are deliberately designed to confuse people into paying too much.
Good call, I will have to run the numbers.
Plus a second phone on the same account is $5/day capped at $60/month. Same unlimited voice/text/data that we get at home. Worth every penny, Mrs. Martian and I can wander around without worrying about losing each other.
Used to do the local sim card thing. Had to get new sim cards when going from UK to Ireland, waste of vacation time. Germany was a pain because they insisted on a local address to register the sim card. Glad to leave that in the past.
There is no additional bill on Fi. All that international roaming is included in the base fee.
Yup – it’s an amazing plan for international usage. From the looks of it, it’s about 2x to 3x more affordable than the comparable international add-ons from other major carriers?
If AT&T charged $120+60 for a month of international usage, at $180 that’s already way more expensive than a month of two Fi lines ($110 total, international unlimited data included in 200+ countries). If you also factor in the base cost of the the AT&T lines ($52/mo/line), it’s skewed even more in Fi’s favor.
Of course, the downside of switching to Fi is you either have to port your number over entirely, or if you get a second line, you end up having a separate “travel number” that you have to warn your US contacts about. And you also have to double-pay your existing carrier while you’re out of the country. Financially, though, it’s still a much better deal.
And compared to foreign SIM cards, it’s a lot less hassle (no ID checks, paperwork, cash, language barriers, etc. to deal with). The app just takes care of everything for you and a few minutes later your phone gets a plan that works in most places in the world, automatically, with no further SIM or number switching needed.
It looks like Verizon has changed to $12 per day, but they kept the monthly at $100 (plus i get a DoD discount on top of that). Plus you can activate it to start the day you arrive so it is 30 days not a calendar month. It’s rare I’d be out of country for < 10 days so the monthly works out to be a good deal.
Only because you can keep your own number. $120 for 30 days is extremely expensive compared to getting a local sim.
It’ll also be interesting to see how Starlink affects the status quo in this space. T-Mobile just started beta testing satellite texting in partnership with them, which lets you text directly to satellite without needing wifi or cell coverage.
Sadly Musk has gone a bit too far off the deep end for my liking, but hopefully once the technology matures, we’ll see more satellite data competition (possibly from China or India?).
Generally the US already has some of the worst & most expensive cell phone coverage in the developed world, and it’s really only the MVNOs (like Fi and USMobile etc.) that are driving innovation, especially in price. The big major ones are just milking their monopolies and constantly consolidating and getting worse… sigh.
I didn’t think the government supplied the phones, just that they could listen in.