Confessions of a YYC Travel Junkie

[btimbit]

What's the best way to use your phone internationally these days? eSim?

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by btimbit

What's the best way to use your phone internationally these days? eSim?

eSim or physical sim are your best options. Airalo is good.

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by Weitz

eSim or physical sim are your best options. Airalo is good.

Oh awesome, thanks for that recommendation, Airalo seems much easier and cheaper then what I was finding with google

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by btimbit

Oh awesome, thanks for that recommendation, Airalo seems much easier and cheaper then what I was finding with google

I’m actually using Airalo in Italy right now on a family trip. 2 iPhones and 2 Androids. No issues at all. Reception is dependant on the local coverage, but it is generally decent.

Previously I used it in Scotland and Ireland and it was also a breeze.

[soulchoice]

Originally Posted by Slacker

How many days do you need to explore Barcelona? I'm planning to go there in the second week of October.

3 full days is more than enough.

[soulchoice]

Originally Posted by btimbit

What's the best way to use your phone internationally these days? eSim?

Look into Bouygues if you are going to multiple EU Countries. As that one sim is good almost everywhere when going from country to country with their package. By that I mean one fee of 25 as an example can be used in multiple uk/other eu country borders. Whereas airalo, you need a package for each country.

Airalo is decent too for one country.

If you’re in the uk and do not mind getting a uk number, for 10 pounds, you’ll get 21 gbs of data per month (promotion now), pay as you go. That is a physical sim though. You could use an esim for your Canadian and then the physical Vodafone sim for data.

If you’re heading to Croatia, wait till you get there, for 10 eu bucks you can get unlimited data for 10 days via tmobile.

[bizaro86]

I'm using Airalo in Australia right now on eSim. It's so convenient and enough cheaper that I'll never to back to using physical sim cards or using roaming.

[Fuzz]

Is it a sad commentary on Canadian telecom that these plans are cheaper than, say, Rogers offerings?

[chedder]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

I'm using Airalo in Australia right now on eSim. It's so convenient and enough cheaper that I'll never to back to using physical sim cards or using roaming.

Forgive my ignorance, but does this allow you to make and receive phone calls and regular texts as well? Is it trough a new number?

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by chedder

Forgive my ignorance, but does this allow you to make and receive phone calls and regular texts as well? Is it trough a new number?

Some will, but most will be data only.

It's basically just another sim card, but digital. If your phone supports it you can go into the settings and pick which sim you want to handle which functions

[MoneyGuy]

I guess my esim is data only. I didn’t know that and made a couple of calls but won’t do that again.

[Cappy]

Thanks for the eSim recs. I will need that in September.

As an FYI, if any of you are going for a nexus interview, they now changed the rules so that (if interview at the airport) you have two interviews now. One in Canada, and another in the US at an airport you will be flying out of.

Super big pain, but you can also choose beforehand to go to the border and have the interviews done same day

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Is it a sad commentary on Canadian telecom that these plans are cheaper than, say, Rogers offerings?

They are terrible. Was in Hong Kong for 3 weeks and was staying at my sister in law's rental. They don't rent it out much anymore so they don't have wifi there.

She gave me her extra sim card and I used 32gigs of data without any slowdown. Tethered it to my laptop, and watched 5 CFL games, netflix and disney+.

It costs $6.50/month... lol

[Fuzz]

Ya, but I also meant even in Canada these travel rates are cheaper than our own telecom offerings.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Cappy

Thanks for the eSim recs. I will need that in September.

As an FYI, if any of you are going for a nexus interview, they now changed the rules so that (if interview at the airport) you have two interviews now. One in Canada, and another in the US at an airport you will be flying out of.

Super big pain, but you can also choose beforehand to go to the border and have the interviews done same day

It's kind of dumb, but it's not a huge deal. I did mine in the spring and flew a couple weeks later for the US interview. It wasn't a huge issue.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by chedder

Forgive my ignorance, but does this allow you to make and receive phone calls and regular texts as well? Is it trough a new number?

No, I've just been doing voice calls via WhatsApp where needed.

Many places you can get a new number for phone calls/texts, but Australia has requirements about showing ID at an office to get a number.

[butterfly]

Does anyone have a recommendation for Canadian SIM cards?

I use a Verizon MVNO here and it doesn't work anywhere outside the US50. Didn't even work in Guam or Northern Mariana Islands when I was there. I plan to spend a couple weeks in Canada and don't really want to rely on WiFi everywhere.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by butterfly

Does anyone have a recommendation for Canadian SIM cards?

I use a Verizon MVNO here and it doesn't work anywhere outside the US50. Didn't even work in Guam or Northern Mariana Islands when I was there. I plan to spend a couple weeks in Canada and don't really want to rely on WiFi everywhere.

I picked up a few Giant Tree sims off of Amazon for a trip to the US, they work in Canada as well.

[getbak]

Piling on the SIM discussion, is Airalo the best for the States too, or is there someone better?

[cmyden]

Originally Posted by getbak

Piling on the SIM discussion, is Airalo the best for the States too, or is there someone better?

If your phone supports e-sims, Airalo is generally the way to go for U.S. travel. As long as you are ok with 'data only'. (No traditional voice calls or texts).

T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T offer free trials of their networks for 30 days using e-sims. But these free trial options can be trickier to setup from Canada and sometimes only work on certain devices. For example with T-Mobile you may need a US App Store ID and US VPN to install it. And maybe a GPS spoofer. A person would likely want to stick with Airalo unless they're really comfortable with tech workarounds.

Physical sim cards in the U.S. aren't quite as cheap as in say, Europe, so there's a price advantage to using e-SIMs in the U.S. T-Mobile and AT&T are popular physical sim card options.

Airalo raised $60 million this month in a Series B round. Prior to that they had raised $5 million. They are the most recognizable name in this space by quite a margin, and have always seemed to have the best reviews overall.

Other options like Holafly and Nomad are probably the second and third most well known. They all pretty much work the same way and seem to piggy-back off the same providers. You could try comparing those 3 and see if there's much of a difference. There seems to be a new Airalo-esque clone site every week.