Stumbled across this a few days ago and finally got a chance to test it out today...
New eSIM provider called
Firsty. Currently their coverage is only available in "Europe, the USA, Turkey and Switzerland", but they claim they'll have a pile more countries by the end of March. (And yes, someone needs a geography lesson – I can handle Turkey being split out, but Switzerland is very much in Europe. I'm guessing "Europe" actually means 'EU Countries' and not all of Europe).
They give you a free eSIM, and then there's 3 ways to get data...
- You get 100MB of "Fast" data for free when you first sign-up. OK, whatever. Gone in 5 minutes.
- You can pay ~US$4/day for unlimited "Fast" data. Maybe OK for a few days, but not long term.
- You get an hour of free "slow" data by watching an ad. Watching another ad gives you another hour of free "slow" data. You can watch the next ad before your hour is up, which increases your remaining time up to 60 minutes ago (ie, it doesn't add on top)
At the moment, the "ad" is just 10 seconds of being shown a static ad for their fast service (ie, no video/sound/etc). Once the 10 seconds are up, you get an hour of Slow data. Speedtest on the slow data in the US gave me 0.16Mbps down, and 0.25Mbps up – certainly not snappy, but not too bad either. I had no problems using it for email, WhatsApp (including sending/receiving photos), Google Maps or even Spotify (which did pause once or twice, but only for a few seconds). That should also be plenty of bandwidth for calls, including voice-over-wifi style calls.
In the US it's roaming onto the AT&T network, with traffic seemingly being backhauled to France.
Whilst I'm not sure I'd rely on this as my main service, especially if you're going to be in a country for any real period of time, it seems brilliant as a backup service, or even just for short trips somewhere (eg, in transit).