[Addono]

Airalo made getting a SIM in India so much easier. The KYC checks they introduced are poorly understood by local vendors making it really painful to get a local SIM.

Also, being able to pre-purchase the SIM card means you can immediately browse when arriving. When we arrived, the WiFi in Chennai airport couldn't deliver the OTP to our foreign phone numbers, so without the pre-purchased eSIMs we wouldn't have been able to get internet.

I don't like it that they charge such a premium, it makes having data as a tourist somewhat of a privilege. Also, local SIMs typically offer beside data also a local phone number, which can be really helpful.

[vinay427]

> I don't like it that they charge such a premium, it makes having data as a tourist somewhat of a privilege.

I obviously don't like that the premium for an eSIM in a place like India is so high, but I think (having a brief look at esimdb.com) $20-30 USD for 10-15 GB is not unreasonable for the substantial portion of tourists to India who are already traveling from another continent [1], and considering it's in the range (±50% perhaps) of mobile data prices for a comparable plan in the UK or the US, I'm not sure it's that much of a privilege for tourists.

To be clear, I don't mean that the premium is warranted, but just that it may not be much of a privilege for many tourists.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/207005/foreign-tourist-a...

[Addono]

> To be clear, I don't mean that the premium is warranted, but just that it may not be much of a privilege for many tourists.

Then we agree on that :)

For sure, it's not a big dent in ones budget for most travelers coming from other continents. The eSIM rates are indeed not that different from local rates. Looking at it transactionally, the premium is easily worth the convenience it yields.

Most of what I dislike about it is that being nearly forced to take the eSIM makes me feel more like an outsider.

Previous time I visited I did manage to get my local SIM, even though it took a couple of hours to find a store which was capable - and willingness - to issue one. This time, the regulation change caused my SIM card to get stuck in bureaucratic limbo because of new and poorly implemented additional KYC checks.

I appreciated the chore of getting a local SIM card, because it exposes you to integrate somewhat. It leads to interesting encounters outside of the normal tourist bubble, not just the people but also a bit in how their day-to-day business works. As such, I would like to be able to recommend others to try to get the SIM for themselves too.

Besides this 'stay in your privileged tourist bubble'-feeling, it also feels wrong that the premium between local data rates and the eSIM rates are that high. Even though the value-add seems minimal for anything other than skipping KYC completely and being able to pay with international credit card.

That difference goes somewhere and - I worry - that by fuelling that niche it only incentivizes the eSIM providers to lobby for borderline impossible KYC checks on local SIMs, which they can bypass for anyone able to afford that premium.

[monksy]

Holy crap "20$ not unreasonable for data in India"

That's a hard no. That's highway robbery. 2gb/day for a month with international calling was $8 with jio

[vinay427]

My comment does not say what you quoted, so I'm not sure which claim you are responding to because it appears to missing most of the context in my comment. I don't necessarily disagree with the text you quoted.