Yes, absolutely a deal breaker... but I carry two phones b/c I do not trust Verizon after being disconnected overseas. Their international plan requires you to re-connect to a US-based cell tower in order to "reactivate" the international plan if it has been disconnected. I am not aware of any service that allows me to buy an e-sim for any given random country airport and activate it before I reach the exit.
edit: forgot to add ... if you change countries or have to make an additional unplanned hop, VZ does not work in that scenario either.
> connect to a US-based cell tower in order to "reactivate" the international plan if it has been disconnected
> if you change countries or have to make an additional unplanned hop, VZ does not work in that scenario either
Just so I understand you, Verizon has an international plan where you have to touch base back in the States every time you go to some other country, before it will work in the next country? I must have misunderstood what you were saying.
No misunderstanding... been affected twice with EU trips that included hops to MENA. And if you are somehow disconnected (due to an error on their end, which are quite frequent) it can not re-establish functionality without accessing a US-based cell tower. After the second or third time it happened, I just started carrying a second phone to put in a local SIM. I ended up saving a ton of money in data charges too.
It's even dumber than that! It used to "just work" when you landed in another country and tried to pull a single byte of data. But now you're required to call VZ and inform them of your trip beforehand. To make matters worse, not all of their reps know this and will tell you that isn't the case and leave you stranded with no coverage. I'm generally happy with VZ over the years but this is just pathetic.
A rep once explained this to me as "innovation". Cool.
Current VZW customer here. Been overseas to Europe a few times (multiple countries each time) and SO went to Asia (3 countries) with absolutely zero issues. Just have to go on the app before you leave to pick an international plan (daily or monthly), select all the countries, and total trip start/end dates. Maybe you are on a business plan and can’t access the app? It’s pretty straightforward in there. Also pretty sure you can update the countries in the app if needed before you hop on the plane in the scenario of an unforeseen stop (or hop on free wifi when you land).
eSim feels similar to a credit card, if you don’t tell the company you are leaving town you could run into issues, but as long at the company is notified it should be seamless.
A bunch of carriers around the world have either “up to X roaming days in a year” or “up to X roaming days at a time” for the included roaming plan. I guess it’s to reset that.
I used Airalo recently in Argentina and can't say I'd recommend it, it somehow broke my iMessage until I reset a bunch of settings and seemingly got throttled at random despite having a ton of data left. Which is a shame because topping up data that way is much easier than switching out a physical sim. I also don't know if it was an esim problem or an Airalo problem, maybe support will be better when it is only esims.
This seems like a deal breaker for me. Although maybe with this announcement, carriers will quickly adapt eSim. Apple has a page of supported carriers (and missing the country I’ve been living, Guatemala)
Traveled to Central America, North America, UK, and various parts of EU, and I've never had any problems at all getting an eSIM sorted out. When I do upgrade to this new iPhone 14 Pro I will likely still bring my old iPhone 12 Pro that does have a physical sim slot JUST IN CASE, but in the past I've had no troubles with eSIMs. I think this is a non-issue from what I've seen, assuming it's not too remote of an area you are traveling to.
All the people saying there are no eSIMs, I don’t know where they are traveling.
I for reasons kept physical sim as US domestic, and used the eSIM internationally for years, popping into any random local phone store and getting dirt cheap local numbers with a QR code.
As a backup, a half dozen apps like GigSky or Nomad that manage eSIMs for countries or regions in case you just can’t find anything (search eSIM in app store). Haven’t paid more than 30USD for unlimited data for a month (or a couple bucks a GB metered) anywhere since they introduced the first eSIMs in EU and Asia.
Similar approach for Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, Korea, Japan.
First, check if any of the big few domestic carriers have a temporary or contract free esim. In Japan, for example, NTT Docomo does.
When you get to Japan you are going to find an operator NTT Docomo physical store, the second most popular. The virtual SIM cards of this company have the following characteristics:
- Data plans of 1 to 7 GB.
- 4G LTE connection.
- No minimum clause or contracts.
- Exclusive virtual SIM cards for 5G devices.
Otherwise, Google "esim Japan" and use any of the gazillion variations of esimjapan, or use a trusted one you have an account with like GigSky, Truphone, or HolaFly.
Yep. That's absolute 100% nonsense. Whenever I travel to Canada for work I just order a t-mobile(or other) sim online before flying out, pop it in on arrival = decent internet in Canada. What am I supposed to do with an eSim? Literally no one will sell you an eSim contract for just few days.
It’s pretty common for European carriers to offer pay as you go plans via eSIM and an app. Pay with your card and can add it to your phone ahead of your trip.
So no, not “literally no one”. Things are changing, eSIM is increasingly common. Apple’s being Apple and just propels that change.
That’s nice but it’s still going to be 10 years or more until it’s as convenient as SIM cards everywhere.
When I crossed the border from Rwanda to Uganda, I bought a sim at a local shop, and a boy from the village cut it down to size by hand with a pair of scissors. They are not going to have ESIM anywhere soon.
ESIM requires carriers around the world to have the technical competency to make the activation and management process work smoothly and that is not something I would count on.
> That’s nice but it’s still going to be 10 years or more until it’s as convenient as SIM cards everywhere.
That's a bold statement to make. You realize that merely 15 years we didn't even have smartphones? How many random prophetic it-won't-happens happened in that time?
That's a fair point, 10 years might be a bit hyperbolic.
On the other hand, Smartphones were better positioned to drive adoption that eSIMs are. Smartphones create immediate utility for the user over feature phones. eSIM is arguably better than a physical sim, but at the end of the day you are only saving maybe a tiny inconvenience every time you have to swap out the sim. So there's not going to be a large push to switch from the user side.
A good comparison might be USB-C. People were writing in 2015 that the writing was on the wall for USB-A[1], and even though USB-C is basically better in every way, it's still not fully adopted 7 years later. It's not even the standard for desktop peripherals.
Also Smartphones are a highly competitive market with multiple vendors vying for users. Telecoms are mostly monopolies, and have little incentive to improve in most cases.
The only real driver I see for this is if eSIM-only devices get widespread popularity. I don't see it happening any time soon with low-end Android phones. Maybe wearables, but I feel like the idea of people in the developing world getting a second data plan for a wearable is a long way off.
That's $44 for 15 days and 6 GB! If I recall correctly, I was paying like a dollar a gigabyte or something on a local sim. You would go to any market and there would be these guys walking around with rolls of activation codes which you could buy for like $0.10 each and they were good for 100MB or a certain number of minutes when you typed it in the phone.
This is exactly what I'm talking about: if you have this phone you will be paying exorbitant prices for connectivity all over the world.
edit: it looks like the average in Uganda is $1.56/GB and you can get data as low as $0.45/GB USD
Airtel, for example, said it was work in progress, as of March this year.
Seriously, when it comes to application of new technology, the world isn't as behind the US as US might think. Often times, they actually get years ahead. I think you overestimate how long it's gonna take Africa or Asia to get eSIM up and running. They have a clear incentive now, as it's only a matter of time before Android manufacturers start to copy Apple in that regard, too.
I'm a dual physical SIM user today but I'm not worried about going eSIM, especially if that was the state of things prior to the iPhone going eSIM only.
I predict it will get easier following this announcement. Also there are services like Airalo with travel eSims for most countries in a single account and app.
> Literally no one will sell you an eSim contract for just few days.
T-Mobile definitely will (I mean, you pay for x GB and minutes and it lasts a month, just like most prepaid setups). Just requires a download of their app -- I use it when I'm traveling to the states (my carrier in NZ uses a physical SIM).
My carrier/plan has service anywhere I go, so I'm not particularly concerned about it. I'm using my US sim card in Europe right now to post this comment.
Roaming is fine for short trips, but you are typically pretty badly de-prioritized and your connection is usually routed through US servers giving you a bad ping. Eventually the carrier is going to boot you off if you stay too long.
Grabbing a local sim card is a must for me since I rely on the data plan for work. It also tends to be much cheaper to get 20 or 30 gigs of 5g data. eSim is making this much more convenient to pick up a secondary plan, but sometimes your best option is a SIM card.
> Roaming is fine for short trips, but you are typically pretty badly de-prioritized and your connection is usually routed through US servers giving you a bad ping. Eventually the carrier is going to boot you off if you stay too long
Not my experience. AT&T international day pass works in many countries I’ve been to, and I stayed online all day, phone or internet. Never once got booted. Not sure what you mean by pinging home either. It works just as well as local SIM card. It better does, as it costs $10 a day
Often the traffic is routed through the US. Did you do a ping to see where your exit node was?
Also, not like I couldn’t pay it, but $300 a month is pretty steep when my current in-country plan is $10 a month for 40 gigs of 5g and I know I am getting first priority and have the lowest ping.
I was in Switzerland for a single day recently, which is a situation where I can see a $10 a day roaming plan make sense, but then I just switched to my secondary sim’s data which included Switzerland in the coverage area.
Although Google Fi claims to support eSIM, the front-line support was unable to help me connect an iPhone 13 Pro, and the back-line support never responded. The solution was to buy a physical SIM card.
Perhaps Google is uniquely incompetent, but I would be very wary about assuming that an eSIM-only phone will work with a given provider.
I remembered a while ago you meed to first get an physical SIM to activate the line then switch to eSIM. Now sure about now. I’m currently with Google Fi on an eSIM in my 12 mini.
I just set up my iPhone with a Fi eSIM without having to get a physical SIM first. There are oblique references on how to do it at checkout that involve backing out of the default flow and then choosing your iPhone model from a compatibility list. It was quite the maze.
I was able to buy a prepaid orange esim, valid for all of EU, load it on my phone before my flight, and activate it on landing. At least for the EU, I don’t see an issue. There are partner networks that are local carriers that will be used when you’re out of orange’s range
No - At least travelling from Europe (UK), carrier charges abroad are usually pretty reasonable. I'm with Vodafone.
I can access my full dataplan for £2 a day if I am travelling in Europe, or £6 a day if travelling outside Europe. This usually means that it's not worth getting a sim now if I go abroad (which maybe is a bit cheaper, but a lot more hassle and I can't keep my number).
Plus if you are travelling through a few countries, you don't have to buy several sims, and if travelling for work then a few days roaming is cheaper than buying the sim anyway.
I'm in the USA and on AT&T and use their "$10 a day international plans" when I travel. It's a little expensive, but it just works. My wife and I were in canada recently during the Rogers network issues and I called up AT&T support and then enabled an option to select the carrier for both our phones. Two reboots and we were back on a known good network. We've traveled to Italy, Serbia, France, Spain, Hungary and haven't run into issues with this setup.
Sometimes getting a local SIM as a foreigner is at best a hassle (Ecuador) and at worst basically impossible to do legally (Peru). In other countries, however (such as many EU countries) it can be quite easy.
I have traveled quite extensively in the developing and developed world and in my experience it’s a rare exception not to be able to get a local sim easily. In most cases you can have one before leaving the airport.
Even in the examples I gave (Ecuador and Peru) it is possible to get a SIM at the airport. But you will pay handily for that privilege due to basically skirting government regulations (the most common scenario is that you are given an under the table SIM that is legally registered to some citizen of the country). In a lot of these cases Google Fi or whatever roaming solution you are using is cheaper, and that doesn’t even count the time value of getting the local SIM card and activating it (and I have also travelled extensively and understand that this process can be a non insignificant time sink) vs just turning your phone on and having it work in whichever country you are traveling to.
I can confirm the same with AT&T. Used it on several trips in Italy, Serbia, and Germany. Really easy to use and I didn’t notice any slowness or apparent deprioritization from being a US carrier.
This plan is only available to AT$T postpaid customers. Prepaid customers are SOL.
I use Google Fi when I roam abroad now for the most part, especially in South America where getting and activating local SIM cards is often especially difficult.
Yes. Even for domestic travel. I’m travelling to a remote island in my country for a short holiday. My network doesn’t have coverage there (only one of the “big four” has decent coverage) so I’ve picked up a prepay SIM to use for a few days. No networks in the UK support prepay SIMs (other than some quite dubious international roaming MVNOs).
International travel usually involves stopping by a kiosk or store at the airport to pick up a SIM. They’re absolutely universal.
Not even traveling, how about your phone dies as they often do? In that scenario I grab whatever old phone is around, pop in my SIM and I get through the day without calling or visiting some retail store. I want less interaction and SIM cards let me have that.
I would wonder what would be the effect of eSIM only on MVNOs in the US. Three major carriers have good eSIM support but the adoption among MVNO is low. And prepaid plan from Verizon doesn’t support eSIM either.
I can report that I’ve used Nomad in France this year and it worked flawlessly. It advertised 100+ counties for that single app. I would give it a try on a compatible phone.
eSIM isn't nearly as easy to get outside of the US as it is from the inside. I can't imagine getting an eSIM if/when I go to India again in the future. Getting a physical SIM was REALLY REALLY difficult.
that said, all of the US carriers have extensive international roaming agreements and international data/voice is much cheaper these days.
Sure you can often get esims “sorted out”, but… why? What’s the upside? Having the physical one “just works”, and you can swap them or put them to different phone or whatever. No need to “download app” or do some registration dance.
Yup, it means I will absolutely not buy this phone. eSIM support is getting better, but if you switch countries with any regularity, you absolutely need a physical SIM card. Currently running a dual eSIM and SIM on my iPhone.
Yup, smaller carriers in Europe don't offer eSIM for their prepay options, which are super useful (a couple of bucks to get a ton of data with EU roaming as well).
There are so many small carriers out there that resell data from partner networks. Often one of these MVNOs can be the best deal to pick up a few dozen gigs of local data that support hotspot. Many may not even have an app, stores or much customer support infrastructure. They sell these in kiosks and cigarette shops all over the world. THese carriers will not be supporting a sim-less phone any time soon and it hurts any frequent traveler to lose access to them.
edit: forgot to add ... if you change countries or have to make an additional unplanned hop, VZ does not work in that scenario either.