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More and more people are ditching carrier roaming in favor of travel eSIMs
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this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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Most Canadian carriers do a "use your plan like you would at home" but the price for it is about USD 10 per day, which is a huge cost compared to many travel eSIMs or a local SIM/eSiM.
Yes, $15 CAD/day to "roam like home". I have an Orange eSIM that I can keep alive if I use it at least once every 6 months - with a local french number that stays mine. It costs me about $40 CAD for a 30 day - 20GB top up. My wife uses Nomad for data only, we both don't need local numbers, and it generally costs $12 CAD for 5 GB 2 week top-up.
So I figure about $60-70 CAD for 3 weeks travel virtually anywhere in Europe. Calls and SMS included (for one) without long distance charges. Compared to $630 for "roam like home" for two people from a Canadian carrier - doesn't matter which one as far as I can tell.
We both recently got new phones to be able to use eSIMs.
And the physical SIMs stay active. So my elderly parents can call my Canadian number if there's an emergency and it will ring through.
In fact, on our last trip to Rome, when we used a credit card at the hotel, it was refused and then seconds later I got a text from the bank asking for confirmation on my Canadian number. I had no choice but to text "Yes" back, and that single text activated roaming for the day and cost me $15.
Yeah the EU is just awesome for being able to just hop from country to country, it's the same with the wireless roaming as it is with your person.
Yeah, I keep that for emergencies (you only pay if you use it) and also turn my Telus on occasionally to check text messages and do two factor authentication (incoming texts are free), but CAD$15 a day to "roam like home" is more expensive than an entire month with a local SIM in many countries.
And yet still a vast improvement on the old model of "you went off airplane mode, please sell your plasma while applying for a second mortgage."
@wjrii @JohnnyCanuck Way Back When(TM) I worked at a telco, we had a customer go over seas on a sales trip, used his phone like normal, and then came home to a phone bill up around $35k.
I don't know how much he made while overseas, but he wasn't *that* upset about the phone bill, outside of him kicking himself for forgetting to get a data pack.
Haha true!
I hate having to use it, but when so many terrible services only allow sms 2fa it is mandatory to have as an option when travelling out of country.
In Canada the way to work around 2FA SMS is to have mobile data roaming off with roaming on, (then switch your sim card to your home number). The incoming text messages and leaving incoming calls ignored won't charge you. It will only charge if you use any mobile data at all, send a text, SMS, MMS message, make any call (including to voicemail) or accept any call (some charge for rejecting a call but won't if you let it timeout on its own).
Same as Australian carriers. Mine is $A10 /day (about $7 USD). If you're travelling for a long time the cost can eventually add up and it's possible to get some cheaper travel sims. But it's just so much easier to not do anything and use your phone as normal.
Big improvement from the old days of roaming.
Got a T-Mobile eSIM while travelling in the US last year to get around this. The eSIM was a great deal (can’t remember the specifics, but pretty cheap with a decent amount of data). I was making two trips to California and Georgia in the same 30 day window, so it was useful to have.
The only downside was that I couldn’t activate the eSIM before getting to the US, and LAX didn’t appear to have any WiFi while we were there (not sure if that was generally true for the time, or if it was just offline). So I wound up having to roam to get the eSIM, and to get a text message from the shuttle that was picking us up from the airport (as I had to give them that in advance, and didn’t know what my US number would be until I got there).
Still saved us some money, but it was a bit of a PITA to activate with no WiFi available at the airport.