T-Mobile US now does something similar. The old SIM, physical or eSIM, receives a text message, and the SIM transfer will not happen without a reply to confirm from the old SIM.

I imagine most of us using eSIMs featured on this thread are for the most part not doing SMS-based 2FA with the eSIMs.

Not the best experience with Airalo in Japan. Needed 1GB to top up some extra data after I went through my TMO 5GB allotment (scam warning: TMO does not align the 5GB to your billing cycle, but rather a separate cycle that runs from the first day you begin using data outside North America).

Added the e-sim, was easy enough, but the data just randomly stopped working and I had to turn airplane mode off/on to reset it. Had to do it about a dozen times over 24 hrs. When it did work, it was very slow, no where near LTE or 5G speed.

Maybe their roaming partners in Japan are not the best, but it was an experience I probably won't be looking to repeat next time.

I had an issue in December 2022. A Moshi Moshi eSIM from Airalo was my first experience, and it was terrible. I contacted Airalo customer service, and they refunded my eSIM and reset it for use again. I have noticed that Airalo in Japan isn't quite as good as other countries. If you look at the details, it says yes for IP Routing. I think the Japan eSIM from Airalo routes its data through Singapore, which can affect speeds, especially if you're trying to access local websites. Even if you're going to US websites, there are extra hops that can reduce performance.

That was the case the last time I used Airolo in Japan... I was identified as being on Singtel and my pings were atrocious. I now primarily use Ubigi in Japan.

Last I tried ubigi in japan, it was also routing to Singapore (it's just hidden, ip Geo located to Japan)

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/34848505-post703.html

After my previous horrible experience with GlobalYo I decided to try them again. I'm in New Zealand for a few day, and esimdb showed GlobalYo as cheapest with their 1 day/500MB plan for 59 cents! I had Firsty ready to go as a backup in case it didn't work, and at least this time if it didn't work I wouldn't need to worry about doing another chargeback as it was only 59 cents!

And it worked fine! Their app is still.. well... I don't know what it is, and I still don't understand what their business or their business model is, but if you limit yourself to the two esim buttons on the main page then things make sense. Payment went through fine with Google Pay, esim installed easily, and whilst it did take about 2 minutes to start working, when it did it worked well. It's using Plus in Poland, so latency is fairly high, but phone/whatsapp calls over it still worked fine, although with the occasional bit of overtalk.

My only real complaint was that there was no notification as to when the plan was going to expire - even in the app it would show an expiry date, but no time. Of course if you'd been buying a single plan to cover the entire trip that wouldn't have been a problem - but buying "1 day" (which did mean 24 hours after first connecting to the network as I'd expected) plans it would have been nice to have a warning, or at least have it show the time it was going to expire. On one occasion I did get caught out and had to fire up Firsty to buy and install a new GlobalYo plan/esim, but that did work fine. They do have longer plans, but for a 3 day trip the longer equivalent option would have been the 7 day/2GB plan for US$8, so over 4x the US$1.77 I paid for 3 days.

I'm still not sure that I'd use them in most situations. My primary issue with them before wasn't that the eesim itself didn't work, but that their support had been so atrocious when it didn't work. This trip has shown that at least when it works it's fine, but I still have doubts about their support.

I think the eSIM market will be much more reliable once there's been a lot of consolidation, though maybe not great for consumers as that may not drive prices down as much.

Not sure there's too much price competition currently though.

I actually wonder how many real operators are around. I have the feeling that a lot of these esim solutions are actually either white label or based third party APIs. I was looking once at such an API solution, at the end that way you could run an esim business as a one-man-show.

Let's face it, one needs to have roaming agreements with like 200+ networks around the globe, that's something only national telcos have. And maybe Airalo who IMHO are one of the few "real" esim operators.

I thought airalo is still a reseller, not a true mvno/network operator?

Actual operator MNO = ais, 3hk, orange , O2, telna.

Mvno= transatel(ubigi), 1global/Truphone(betterroaming), BICS/proximis (roamless). If provider gives you one eSIM that works globally without expiry, chances are they're a mvno (or working for a mvno/mno).

In-between : dent, keep go?

Reseller/whitelabel/API : they host a website/app to sell esim, but own none of the underlying infrastructure: almost everyone else reseller from MNO or MVNO above

They are most likely not a classic operator, as they don't have own antennas. However I believe they operate their own backend infrastructure, maybe even operate own exit points to the internet in various geographic regions. I just found a press release from 2023 where they state to have received 60 Mio USD in funding from major operators like Telefonica, Orange, Liberty Global. They must be doing more than just operate a website with that money. In the release they describe themselves as a marketplace for esims, I believe that's a bit of an understatement. From my perspective most of those esims they sell are own products with arbitary brands. The only exception I noticed was the dtac tourist sim for Thailand.

If I had to guess, this is what they're doing for all eSIMs that are not another mobile network's branded eSIM. They are an MVNO in most cases and a reseller in a few others, such as for dtac eSIMs.

Doesn't it come down to companies which operate their own networks and have roaming deals with carriers in other countries versus companies which don't operate a network but buy bandwidth from various networks?

I guess the Asian carriers are more aggressively selling bandwidth because their postpaid customers are not consuming enough data? So they have excess capacity and it makes sense to sell it.

Or maybe they do consume a lot of data but the networks are over deployed, have greater capacity.

thats the V in MVNO vs MNO
Mobile Network operator (MNO)
Mobile Network Virtual operator (MVNO)

you could be either to sign roaming deals directly with carriers.

or you could just whitelabel/resell a product sold by a MNO/MVNO without having to talk to foreign carriers at all (in this case, are you really a MNVO?)

i think Poland Play is very aggressive in selling travel esim bandwidth, I see many travel esims going with them (if you see travelesim asking you to set APN: Play/Play Internet, that's Poland play)

one reason might be cost/scale, especially within EU due to EU wholesale data regulation (these are max allowed wholesale rates, not rates sold to consumer directly) https://www.capacitymedia.com/articl...-voice-and-sms

could also be that the MNO/MNVO contracted certain minimum spend/capacity requirements with foreign networks, and needs to hit that minimum regardless. the MNO/MVNO might make more money charging their native customers high roaming fees, and just need these travel esims to recuperate the rest of the costs. and remember that most people won't exhaust the whole 10GB data bucket (whatever they bought) before leaving the country

Most roaming is handled through 3rd party companies who handle all of that - from actual data transport to billing. The telcos themselves generally won't bother maintaining specific infrastructure with other (foreign) telcos as the overhead is simply too high, so they instead use these clearing houses. I'm sure there are exceptions (eg, AT&T and BT probably have enough cross-over to have something direct between them), but most roaming is handled outside of the telco itself.

Whilst I can't say that Airalo aren't an MVNO in some counties, they clearly aren't in general. The fact that their country-specific eSIMs route through random countries that are (generally) not the country you've visiting makes it clear they are just reselling others eSIMs. If all of their Asian eSIMs routed through Singapore (where they are based) or some other single country then I'd think differently, but at least in my experience that's not how they work. (Their Japanese eSIM does route through Singapore, but that's the only one I've found that does)

Airalo uses Webbing, who in turn partners with the carriers, at least in the US.