Yes, this happens because roaming in general routes all traffic via the servers of your SIM’s home country access point network (APN). In practice, a lot of the SIM marketplaces and resellers by this via mobile operators in Channel Islands, Ireland, Malta, HK, etc. (This is also true when using a physical SIM in roaming mode, e.g., a physical US-issued SIM would route traffic via US).

Roaming in Europe when the eSIM uses a European underlying provider is usually no issues. The major issues on latency I’ve seen crop up are primarily when using an eSIM to roam in Asia, with the APN being based in Europe due to high latencies involved in that round trip.

However…I have found a solution around this sometimes that resolves latency issues. If you have an iPhone, it now has a built-in VPN like service called iCloud+ Private Relay. The details are complex, but fundamentally what it does is routes traffic via the three largest content delivery networks (Cloudflare, Akamai, and Fastly). So while your SIM will still first contact where the APN is based (say, Ireland) it’s very, very likely that this server is directly interconnected with Cloudflare/Akamai/Fastly. The net result is that while the initial connection has high latency, any subsequent pages will likely load faster.

Note that if you’re using a VPN with roaming eSIMs (traditional VPNs, not iCloud+ Private Relay), this will added even more latency. For example, if you eSIM APN in in Ireland and you’re using a VPN server in the US, your connection will first need to connect to Ireland, then to the US, then to destination site. So, if you’re facing latency issues in eSIMs check if there’s a VPN active and turn it off.

A good way to figure out where the connection is being routed from is to use speedtest.net with:

1. Just the eSIM on roaming
2. eSIM on roaming + VPN (if you have one)
3. eSIM on roaming + iCloud+ Private Rely (if you have it)

…and checking which one works best. Focus on latency rather than raw speed generally as this is the biggest issue browsing on mobile.

One exception to this latency issue is Netflix, which in roaming eSIMs + iCloud Private Relay seems to route to random servers in Peru/Argentina/Chile/Singapore rather than the closest ones geographically. So specifically for Netflix if you find slow buffering speeds, test out where it’s connecting to by running a speed test on fast.com and then clicking “More info”.