I’m travelling to Chile for a couple of weeks in July, and someone has highlighted the option of using an eSIM rather than buying a physical SIM in Chile to provide the usual phone / data services.
Has anyone any experience of using these? How do they work alongside your existing SIM and number?
Thanks
Gavin
I don’t have experience of e-sim, but I did look into it in some detail before a two month trip around Europe that I’ve just completed. Certainly for my trip, and for what I needed, a physical sim was cheaper, though it meant I also had to put my home sim into an old phone to keep with me to be contactable by people not knowing my temporary number (necessary for a number of reasons).
Travelling in a campervan I wanted an absolute minimum of 10GB per week, preferably more. The best deal I found was from simcorner .com, buying 2 simcards with one month validity each, each giving 100GB for £30. They worked well. The sims also had a phone number, but I don’t recall what allowance there was as that was not my priority. I used the sims my main phone, as personal hotspot for the various devices we had.
While looking I noted for future reference that the website keepgo .com seemed good for e-sims worldwide.
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I’m using Flexiroam for years (back when it was a physical SIM sticker and then after it changed to an eSIM solution) and have only good experience. Setup can be a bit fiddly though as different eSIMs might need to be installed for different locations and eSIM settings might need to be manually changed for the service to work.
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I travel frequently with two numbers (contract, not pay as you go) from two different countries, one physical, one virtual. As a frequent traveller, it is much more convenient than carrying two phones.
You have to remember to check which account is used for roaming and which is the priority number for calls. It’s nice to be able to completely switch off one line or the other.
I had to chose which physical sim to change to an e-sim. One operator charged, the other was free. The one that charged would charge again if I changed my phone.
One thing I hadn’t thought of was that WhatsApp is linked to a phone so you can’t see both accounts. There are workarounds if that’s important but it wasn’t an issue for me, just a surprise.
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Yes, I had trouble with Whatsapp, and through temporarily using a second phone, onto which I switched WhatsApp for continuity of telephone number, then changing back, message threads has been interrupted and I’ve lost a chunk of messages some. It is something of which to be aware, and if necessary take steps to not be caught out.
Re my first post above, I omitted to say that the phone service I use is non contract pay monthly, with data.
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To be clear, the WhatsApp issue only applies to people who are using a SIM+eSIM instead of carrying 2 phones and require 2 WhatsApp numbers.
This would probably not be a concern in OP’s case. When traveling and when travel eSIM is use, the primary WhatsApp number still works and doesn’t incur any extra charges. It’s actually even better compared to phone calls/messages as people who want to reach you on WhatsApp can do that seamlessly regardless of where you are.
The risk in OP’s case is when people call your primary SIM phone number - in that case roaming charges occur.
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I have used a Glocalme MiFi modem a few times and have been pleased with the service and cost.
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Thanks everyone for your comments and recommendations which I’ll follow up. Sounds like things should work fine.
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