Why is everyone so keen on getting an Airalo eSIM is beyond me. Most of the time other eSIMs offer more value.

docbert did say if you do not plan to use too much data… eg 1GB/1d is US$4.50, 2GB/15d is US$6.50, 3GB/30d is US$8.50, all less than S$12.

I agree most travellers now will use more than that each day, but maybe 7 years ago I could make do with maybe 300MB/day on 3G and otherwise primarily wifi connectivity on my travels. In SG especially, it’s not just hotels, you can get free wifi in places such as MRT stations and McDonalds (and also the airport).

To me, Airalo gives a good mix of convenience, performance and price for the way that I use data. Doesn't mean they are the cheapest, or the best, or the fastest - but so far I've yet to have a bad experience with Airalo, where the few times I've tried other companies (not including local (e)SIMs) I have had issues in some form or other.

For this particular trip I knew I wouldn't need much data, as it was a 4 day trip where I knew 90+% of the time would be in either the hotel or our office - both of which have Wifi. If I'd been buying from Airalo I probably would have bought the 2GB plan even through I knew 1GB would have been enough. I certainly didn't need 100GB!

I have the same perspective. Airalo isn't the cheapest, but it provides a convenient option in places where getting a local SIM might have language or process barriers, such as Japan.

In Singapore, I always go with the Singtel option. Yes, 100 GB is way more than I need for the duration of my stays so far, but it's nice not having to worry about data consumption.

Agreed! I also do the Singtel prepaid option, especially now that it's much easier via eSIM and does not require an in-person visit to a telecom shop with passport.

Seems like the Asian carriers are just better at adopting things like eSIMs and offering a lot of data at much lower prices.

If you can get such cheap data in an otherwise expensive place like Singapore, there's no reason European carriers couldn't deliver some comparable offers.

Though to be fair, Singapore is a tiny country, though maybe more dense in population maybe, whereas national carriers Western Europe have to cover whole countries and populations of tens of millions, across more challenging terrain.

The Orange European eSIM offer is interesting, 100 GB instead of the usual 50 GB across all of Europe for the summer. Obviously they're making money in the promotion and these big European carriers have very good roaming arrangements with each other. Does it mean prepaid data becomes cheaper or they just offer bigger packages of data at a higher price?

A lot of these countries though have stringent passport registration requirements for prepaid data. I don't know if being able to get eSIMs without going into mobile shops and having your passport xeroxed is a loophole that they will eventually close.

Singapore has always had relatively cheap data for travelers, going back 10+ years. As you say, >5 million people living on a country the size of a postage stamp makes it much easier to provide good coverage at a lower price (per head) than most other countries in the world. They also have a good competitive market with 3 carriers, all of whom can provide basically the same level of coverage due to the size of the country.

That said, I'm currently posting this via a mobile connection in Australia that cost me A$15 (US$10) for 30 days/100GB. That's not a "normal" price but an on-sale price - but such sales are basically continually occurring. That's for a country with far lower population density than Singapore!

Singapore has this, but as per my post above Singtel are getting around it using technology, and I'm sure at least the other 2 main SG carriers will follow before too long. Airalo and presumably others also implement similar mechanisms. Australia also has ID requirements, but they less strict - you need to provide a drivers license/etc number, or for foreigners a passport number. The number IS checked as being valid (for foreign passports, it is checked to have a valid visa/etc to enter Australia) - but there's no active validation that you are the person that owns the document!

The eSIMs aren't from carriers in those countries, so the only way to close the "loophole" would be to break roaming, which no sane regulator would do.

As someone I know has found out to their cost esims have their disadvantages. They were sim-jacked when a scammer got hold of her email and mobile phone number details, probably from a breach somewhere. They then convinced (and it wasn't all that hard apparently) her (UK) Mobile phone network to port her phone number to their esim. Using that they took over her email using the reset password function and used the her phone number registered to her as the two factor authentication. From there it was easy to compromise many other things, and I've been helping with the aftermath. The scammer had set the email to forward to a Gmail account they'd set up and not keep copies.

The mobile network, who have admitted they screwed things up (lack of security checks) and caused all of this. I've reset everything and moved them to a new email address, The bloke in the mobile network's shop said this wouldn't have happened if it was a physical sim because they would have had to send it somewhere and then be traced. I'm being a bit careful with what I write because this is still being investigated.

Lot of these eSIMs though are short-term.

Travelers looking for data and mobile access for trips.

I also wonder, these eSIMs are sold through MVNOs.

So do they contact the carriers even though presumably only the MVNOs have your email and phone number?

It's possible for a SIM swap attack to happen with a physical SIM card as well. An eSIM doesn't necessarily make things any easier when the weakest link is the employee who allowed the SIM change.

As frappant said, this thread is primarily about sharing experiences with eSIMs to supplement one's main mobile service while traveling internationally.

What you've described has been going on for 10 or more years, and has nothing to do with eSIM. In fact, such attacks are generally easier to do using physical SIMs rather than eSIMs. Google for "SIM swap attack" and you'll find no end of information.

Many phone providers have added extra layers of security to stop this type of attack occurring. Many more still have not yet done so.

The other thing to consider. Many people use a Google Voice number for 2FA.

Doubtful you can call Google and get them to change the GV SIM or whatever.


Main problem is that some institutions won't accept GV number for 2FA so you're stuck using a regular mobile number for SMS for 2FA.

I haven't dug into it much but there's a push for passkeys. Not sure if that's better or worse for preventing these kinds of ID theft such as SIM jacking.

The fact that U.S. and European providers haven't figured this out in 2024 borders on criminal. To move an eSIM in India you either have to make the request by SMS from the old SIM or go to the shop with ID. For physical SIM swaps you have to go to the shop. Either way, the old SIM stays live for a few hours and gets a ton of texts confirming the SIM swap and telling you how to cancel it. And if you miss all of those, the new SIM doesn't get SMS for 24 hours so you have even more time to contact the carrier.

If Airtel and Jio can figure this out for people paying $4 a month, surely "first-world" carriers can do it too.

The only way to port a GV number out is to unlock it in your Google account, so to "SIM-jack" a GV number you'd have to get into the Google account, for which we hope everyone is using a good password and 2FA that's not SMS.

Yes I know, someone I worked with many years ago apparently had that happen to them I discovered on the weekend. I've been aware for years because the company I worked for back then issued a security alert about it and gave instructions on what to look for and do.

I'm only going with what the manager of the Mobile network store said which was that It did make it easier in this case. There wasn't any need to send out a physical SIM which would have meant the scammer had to have the address where the card should be sent to. This in turn would have meant that there was a delay between the request being made, the Sim Card being sent out and the number being available to the scammer, increasing the chance the issue was caught. The scammer would have to be present in the UK (and at the account address) when the sim card was delivered. That means they had a far greater chance of being physically caught. Any change in the address it was being sent to would should have triggered additional layers of security. Yes the employee who allowed the swap to an esim should have followed more robust security procedures and was probably the weakest link. The problem was that the esim made the swap of numbers between phones almost instantaneous and no need to actually be in the UK let alone at the account address, which at that point they may not have known.