When travelers go abroad, their connectivity options leave much to be desired. International roaming is expensive and spotty, wifi is only available in certain locations, and getting a SIM card at the airport (or elsewhere) slows travelers down — and sometimes requires them to share personal information to meet eKYC requirements. With any of those options, travelers lose out on affordability, reliability, or convenience. eSIM technology, however, offers travelers a connectivity solution that delivers on all three.
Travelers need a smarter connectivity toolset
When travelers rely on their home networks internationally, they can typically access day plans — costing them anywhere from $12 to $50 — that offer them data coverage for a given 24-hour period. Not only are these day-plan options expensive, but they’re also not necessarily going to provide travelers with good connectivity.
“If your home operator in Australia is Telstra or Optus, and you go to, say, France, it’s not necessarily going to be quality service,” says Kuok Shern Ng, Head of Product at Nomad. “Alternatively, coming from the U.S. to China or Singapore, you’d be roaming on a 2G network. So it’s convenient, but it’s not great.”
Replacing their devices’ standard SIM cards with physical, local SIM cards can provide travelers with much better connectivity, since local SIMs enable travelers to access local networks. Unfortunately, physical SIM cards are a far less convenient connectivity option.
Buying a SIM card in advance online isn’t always feasible, for example, and travelers who wait to buy SIM cards at their destination airports can’t connect to things like email, text messaging, and rideshare services as soon as their planes land. Depending on regulations in their destinations, travelers may even need to supply certain personal information to register their physical SIM cards for telecom-operator verification.
And while many travelers try to dodge the data issue altogether by changing their behavior while traveling (such as by limiting themselves to free hotel or restaurant wifi), there’s a better solution available to them than simply avoiding smartphone use.
eSIMs reduce connectivity costs, improve access
An eSIM is a digital SIM card that travelers can download to their phones via app, typically in advance of a trip, and then activated once they arrive in their destinations. Once activated, eSIMs allow travelers to access per-gig mobile data and SMS plans at low local rates, with no surprise fees.
Unlike with physical SIM cards, “one benefit [of an eSIM] is that when you’re traveling, you can still keep your home SIM card in your phone — so you might still be able to receive messages or voice calls,” says Terry Guo, Co-founder of Nomad. “You can also use an eSIM as a hotspot on your phone or tablet.”
Additionally, the cost benefits of using an eSIM to access local-network connectivity can add up — especially as travelers make their way through multiple international destinations. Nomad’s regional plans, for example, allow travelers to install a single eSIM and connect in multiple countries. (The Europe Regional plan, for example, enables travelers to connect in 36 countries with one eSIM.)
Ensuring both connectivity and ease of use
Ultimately, connectivity is important to people — especially when they’re traveling. The technology people rely on to connect with others while traveling needs to be reliable, simple to use, and inexpensive. Nomad is optimized for service, user experience, and cost savings of up to 40% compared to international roaming.
“A lot of eSIM providers are especially good at either their network quality, or their app experience, because they’re two different specialization areas,” says Ng. “With Nomad, we’re focused on having both the telco relationships that ensure that our service quality is top notch, as well as the streamlined user experience that matters to travelers.”
Today, Nomad offers travelers a broad selection of flexible data plans designed to accommodate just how much data they need, just where they need to use it, that all come with 24/7 customer support on chat or email. In the near future, Nomad customers will even be able to connect multiple eSIMs, downloaded on multiple devices, through the same shared data plans — opening up new opportunities for families and other groups of travelers to more easily control their data costs.
Conclusion
Whether you’re traveling solo or in a group, for business or for pleasure, you have unique, varied connectivity needs that international roaming and physical SIM cards aren’t always able to meet.
“When you’re on a two- or three-day trip, you can’t afford to lose time waiting in line for a SIM card, and you don’t want to pay through the nose for a $50-per-day plan from your home provider,” says Ng. “An eSIM gets you connected in a reliable way, right away, and delivers on cost savings.”
The Nomad eSIM solves the travel connectivity problem — delivering on affordability, reliability, and convenience for both business and leisure travelers. Learn more at Nomad web store or download Nomad eSIM at App Store and Google Play.