Originally Posted by frappant

I bought a SIM from Vodafone Espana for €30 for 160 GB of data about 3 weeks ago.

I used almost 100 GB before leaving Spain last week.

Got 5G in the bigger cities and when it roamed at FRA where I connected to my fight back to the US.

Now back in the US, it's roaming on AT&T 5G in my home where it measured 530/93 Mbps. I have T-Mobile but don't get such a great signal with them inside my home, rarely get over over 50 Mbps down, though if I walk outside my home and maybe 30 feet, then I gets speeds in the hundreds of Mbps.

I have 28 GB of roaming for another week, though I'm using mostly Wifi in home.

But during my trip in Spain, it was often faster than the Wifi in the places where I stayed so I used it everywhere, including streaming and app downloads.


I spent about an hour going to a Vodafone store to get this SIM so that is something to consider, where eSIM is so much more convenient than hunting down a local SIM, getting it activated.

Many countries have laws about registration, such as providing a passport. So it's probably difficult for local carriers to circumvent these laws by offering online eSIM. In fact, I'm wondering why countries with have this registration requirement would not be trying to close the loophole of these multi-country eSIMs.