[malyk]

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.

[ks2048]

That works, but consider local SIM card coverage in many places can be less than $0.50 per day - a big difference for long or frequent trips.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

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.

[skohan]

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.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

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.

[skohan]

But you still have the option of using an eSIM/Google Fi in countries where local sims are problematic when you also have a sim tray.

If you lose the sim tray, you are at a disadvantage in places where local sims are the best option, which are many.

[nunez]

it is basically impossible to get a SIM in India once you leave the airport as a foreigner, in my experience, unless you know someone local

[wil421]

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.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

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.