[em-bee]

i get your point, but i can't remember in recent years that there would be any difficulty to get wifi access even if i didn't have roaming, so this feels like a mere inconvenience instead of an impossibility

[sib]

In a particularly ironic situation, I was trying to log in to my bank's website on a computer from a distant international location so I could pay the credit card bill and, since it was a new browser, the bank required 2FA via my phone in order to log in. Of course, I could not receive the SMS, so could not log in, and could not make the payment.

[em-bee]

ah, yes, but as has been said elsewhere in this discussion, many banks now use apps instead of sms. an app would have worked over wifi.

[sib]

Ah, yes, but I did not have access to Wi-Fi either. My phone could not connect to the internet. The (borrowed) desktop computer was online.