Traveling overseas usually means flying to a single country, and then using roaming or a local SIM card to provide data for your phone and tablet. If you’re a frequent, global traveler, Holafly wants you to try something completely new: a “subscription” eSIM that always lives on your phone.
The concept isn’t hard to grasp: If you’ve traveled to a country like Japan, you can buy a physical SIM card from a local provider that replaces your own, or tucks into a second SIM slot on a dual-SIM phone. However, eSIMs can replace SIMs as a downloadable authentication token that allows your existing phone to connect to the local network without roaming.
The drawback of both approaches is that one SIM or eSIM generally works in just one country. (Take a bullet train from England to France to Switzerland and you might have to swap SIMs at each destination, since even regional SIM cards won’t always work in non-EU countries.) Holafly, an Irish provider, wants you to subscribe to an eSIM that always lives on your phone or PC, automatically roaming to the new country’s plan once it connects.
Holafly’s plans aren’t cheap: $49.90 per month buys you 25GB of data at over 160 countries, or $64.90 per month for unlimited data. The company’s plans page also doesn’t specify whether you’ll be roaming on to a 5G or 4G network, or whether your connection will be de-prioritized versus a local connection. If you subscribe to an unlimited plan, you’ll also receive a local “phone number” from the U.S, United Kingdom, or Canada. But this “phone number” will only receive SMS messages, such as to authenticate a financial transaction or WhatsApp confirmation.
There is an additional interesting side benefit, however: Sign up for one of the paid plans, and you’ll be able to “keep” your eSIM active on your phone if you cancel anytime. (Monthly subscriptions renew at the end of 30 days; annual plans are available.)
This additional “Always On” plan is free, and valid “indefinitely” but in a smaller group of 70 countries. The “Always On” plan will only give you a single gigabyte’s worth of data per month, however, and will be terminated after three months where you don’t use it — which could mean that travelers who travel once or twice a year won’t see much benefit. Holafly has listed the 70 countries that the Always On service will connect to on its “terms and conditions” page, which caters to Europeans: Canada isn’t included, for example, and of North and South America, only the U.S., Mexico, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico and Brazil are included.
Still, for those who frequently fly, the additional convenience of an “always on” eSIM might be worth it — or at least provoke competition from other carriers looking to provide an even better deal. The Gadget Guy blog notes that one Australian company, Simify, sort of does so, offering a 90-day eSIM that roams across 111 countries.