Had my first chance to use Firsty over the past 24 hours due to an overnight connection in Frankfurt. I did try to use them in Israel but it didn't work - not surprising given that they are still only stating coverage in (basically) US/EU, but they had announced they would have global coverage on March 25th - presumably they are running behind.

Upon landing in Germany I turned off airplane mode, enabled my Firsty eSIM, and it connected to a network. I was then able to go into their app and "watch an ad" (which was still just a static ad for their fast service), at which point my data started working. That 60 minutes got me to my hotel, where I had wifi. Today I've had to watch a few ads and service has worked fine. Only once did I get an ad that wasn't for Firsty, but was a video ad for Temu. It played half-way through the 15 seconds run time, hung, and then about 10 seconds later said I was done and I had 60 more minutes.

Performance is slow as advertised - speedtest came in at about 0.15MBps - but has been perfectly for the things I've been using it for such as email, messaging, and Google Maps. I haven't tried making a call, but my 2nd SIM configured to use "Backup Calling" is successfully registered over the Firsty data connection, so I'm sure it'll work fine.

Looks like Firsty have finally done the global expansion they were promising, and now have service in 70 countries (although it still doesn't include Israel, so wouldn't have helped me for my trip last week). Note that the list on their website isn't sorted properly. eg, Australia IS on the list, but you need to scroll down a few lines to find it despite starting with A!

Going into the app triggered me re-authing, and then had me remove my existing Firsty eSIM and add a new one (manually, no QR code) which worked fine. They gave me a new 100MB of "Firsty Fast" data. My next planned international trip isn't for another 3-4 weeks so I won't get a chance to test them again until then, but if anyone uses them please let us know how you go.

Just want to share something I got caught up on.... It turned out Eskimo, even though it is based in Singapore, does not work in Singapore. I guess probably due to regulatory reasons. Data would repeatedly connect to the network and disconnect.

Has anyone tried Mobimatter?

Their prices seem much better than Airalo, especially for a lot of data.

https://mobimatter.com/esim-europe

For instance, 50 GB for $50 vs. $100 at Airalo.

https://www.airalo.com/europe-esim

Who knows which carriers they roam on and where they route the traffic.

Airhub offers “unlimited” and 50 and 65 GB plans for $30!

https://www.airhubapp.com/esim/Europe

Wonder if it's like esim.net where they resell Vodafone UK service? Does it say anywhere who the provider is (since a UK number is provided).

Mobi matter is reseller, they do mention what they're reselling (sparks in this case), but don't see the same exact plan via sparks directly.

https://sparks.travel/packages/europeplus?plan=global

I see some complaints about Airhup.

Looks like some of these aggregators are selling Maya SIM for Europe. That sounds like an Asian carrier.

Yeah I was wondering about Airhub, their TOS says you can't send any texts on the European unlimited, lol.

Airhub kind of sucks.

I bought a US data eSIM from them for AT&T - the listing had the AT&T globe symbol. I download the eSIM, and it will only register with T-Mobile.

I contacted their help, which said it only operates on T-mobile - no offer to refund. They said they would "try" to update their website - that was almost a month ago, they are still falsely advertising the eSIM as AT&T.

I used Mobimatter two years ago and it was a good value for the money. One issue I had was it doesn't want to process my credit card for whatever reason. A Mastercard gift card worked.

Any recent experiences with Orange e-sim?
 

iPhone 15 - going to Austria, Germany, and Croatia.


I haven’t used e-sim before and want text, phone & data.

thank you

Go to settings, general, about then scroll to carrier lock. If the message is “no sim restrictions”, you can add an additional esim. If not, lookup your carrier unlock policy.

The bigger question is how easily you would manage having two SIMs, some combination of physical and eSIM, and making sure to manage the correct one.

I briefly tried it on an iPhone, wasn't sure that it was using the data from the local eSIM vs. my main T-Mobile eSIM.

So I've tended to install the eSIM or physical SIM on my iPad Air 5th gen, which works out well because I'm using it as hot spot and the bigger battery is probably better and even if your battery runs down, you don't have as urgent a need for having charge on an iPad as you would on your phone.

As I recall there is a way in the settings to designate which SIM to use for which purposes. I can't be more specific because I'm on Android and my limited experience with this on an iPhone was helping mom set this up on hers the last time we traveled internationally together.

On Android it's pretty clear which SIM is being used for calls/texts/data.

This is a pretty good peace-of-mind workaround though.

For my domestic eSIM, I have data roaming set to off and with WiFi calling enabled. My domestic eSIM uses the data of the local eSIM for texts and calls when I am traveling .

There are several threads discussing IMS since Apple has supported the functionality since the XR. I am not sure the official name but the latest Pixels and Samsung phones support the same functionality.