Originally Posted by
frappant
Got answers back from SIM Local:
1. Yes you can purchase online with US credit card and install with QR code.
2. Prices are mostly the same between stores and online.
3. If KYC is required you upload passport and selfie.
4. No roaming if purchasing a first-party carrier eSIM like EE or 3. They also sell some MVNO-branded eSIMs so presumably those could roam on another domestic carrier.
So I went and got this eSIM, 150 GB for £20. A better price than the Orange Euro eSIM which is typically €40 or more for 100 GB.
It worked fine in York and on the train from LHR into central London and then on the train up to York, which was delayed by over an hour so the connectivity was more than just entertainment, it was needed to figure out alternative routes.
But then after 3-4 days I drove from York to Whitby, a seaside town NE of York. It does draw a fair number of tourists, though I'm not sure how it compares to the Yorkshire Dales in popularity.
In any event, as soon as I arrived, the speeds just crashed, under 1 Mbps, if it connected at all. I contacted SIM Local, after awhile they said to contact EE.
I researched and apparently it's just poor mobile networks here. The EE eSIM shows 2 or 3 bars of 5G. But I tried my T-Mobile eSIM and it selected EE and 5G but it was also poor. I tried all the other networks. Some had no signal, others were LTE or E for Edge.
So hopefully this is just the locale, not this prepaid eSIM being purposely capped.
When I do speed tests, it would take a good long time to start and then finish the download at under 1 Mbps most of the time and sometimes, it would start the upload with a big burst, over 70 Mbps once, but then it would drop fast and end up also under 1 Mbps. So I wonder if EE is capping speeds here or maybe capping this eSIM thinking I hit some data cap but I've only used about 12 GB before coming to Whitby.