Also check out Orange.

https://travel.orange.com/en/buy-a-s...ers/germanyThe 12GB eSIM is:


14 days

12GB in 4G LTE

Unlimited calls from Germany to Germany

30 minutes from Germany to the world

200 SMS from Germany to the world

Data tethering allowed and unrestricted

Once you order and installed, then can turn off autopay. Believe it's max 12GB EU roaming, but not sure how the 12GB roaming and 25GB domestic UK counts towards each other (eg if you used 21GB domestic, only 4GB for roaming?)

In additional, get a PAYG esim product that you install permanently on your phone, so you have a backup, and can use it after you land but before you get to activate the Lyca esim.

Roamless/qrispy costs ~$2.45/GB in europe, esim.sm/unisim.net is another one around $1.5+/GB in europe. Each has various sign up bonuses or referral codes, Roamless has chargeable outgoing voice calls starting at $0.01/min (no incoming voice, no text) and regional IP routing (esim.sm and unisim goes through Poland, qrispy has regional IP routing) . You should be able to put $5 minimum , pick one of them, verify it works right now even before your travel (and hopefully they support another network provider locally, so you can use it as backup if you lose signal on your current provider)

Just remember that this Lyca product must be activated inside UK (eg airport wifi). If you use those PAYG products, the IP address will likely be outside UK, so don't activate if you are physically in UK but using those PAYG products

(Again pointing to airalo $4/GB being expensive. And those providers are payg, whatever you don't use stays as balance with no expiry*)

*Lifetime of you or the provider. Eg Roamless was no expiry, tried to pivot to expiry and got a huge backlash, and went back to no expiry.

Thank you again. I have ordered the eSIM, and now I have more questions.

After I activate the eSIM, will it be obvious how to turn off autopay? Can you give me some guidance? [Edit to add: I clicked on My Lyca Mobile in the top row at the web page, and saw where I could enter my Lyca Mobile number (once I have it). I'm guessing that something that follows will let me opt out of autopay.]

If I need an internet connection to activate the eSIM, it seems like a chicken-and-egg situation. Granted, free Wi-Fi will likely be available somewhere, but it seems like an odd juxtaposition of requirements from Lyca that I be the UK and have someone else's internet connection.

I scanned the QR code and was told that proceeding would install and activate the eSIM. I'd like to install the eSIM, and since I'm not in the UK, it should not activated, but I exited without doing anything. If I had proceeded, could I have installed the eSIM (without activation, since I'm not in-country)? If so, how would I activate later, since the QR code was for both installing and activating? (It's a small deal, but I'd like to get past the stage of needing a device to display the QR code to my phone, and obviously needing the phone to scan the QR code. If the eSIM were on the phone and I could just turn it on, that would be more convenient.)

Sorry for all the novice questions. There is a lot I don't know.

Airport wifi

Its just a specific limitations that I warned you about for this provider .. if you're not comfortable with this, go with Airalo or Roamless or any of the other travel provider

You already scanned it when I told you not to(outside the UK). Don't know if it messed anything up

In most phones, when phone asks to scan QR code via camera, you can click on something to load image from file or paste the text string instead

https://www.reddit.com/r/eSIMs/comme...im_outside_of/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Telecommuni...have_to_be_in/

Thanks for that suggestion. I think that is what I am going to do. I did talk to a Verizon CSR about it and it sounds like it is easy to switch plans. It is only $25 more than my current plan and it would be prorated for using it the 10 days or so I plan to be overseas.

I have friends who switch one of their phones to and from the Unlimited Ultimate plan based upon their travel schedule and needs.

My wife's normal Verizon plan is Unlimited Plus. When she travels outside North America, I switch her to Unlimited Ultimate for the month. The price differential per month is about $12 with taxes. Turning it on and off takes less than 90 seconds via Verizon's client portal.

A recent trip to Europe saved me over $120 using this strategy (versus paying their $12/day normal international usage fee).

I too use Three UK, although it's been a while (8 years) since I visited. It's my understanding though that you do have to use it every 180 days even with a balance on it. I was sending "keep-alive" texts to that number from my US number, but at some point I got email from them saying they were about to cancel the line because I hadn't made any calls or sent any texts, so since then I have been sending a keep-alive text from it instead (costing 35p each time).

Has anyone tried Saily Ultra?

https://saily.com/esim-ultra-plan/

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...19f3fbe7b2.png

IF travelling to multiple destinations, it could work out cheaper as 30GB is sufficient for most people when travelling.

Just FYI that the it's ONE lounge access and ONE fast track per month. Would be a very good deal if it was multiple (assuming one doesn't have PP)

https://support.saily.com/hc/en-us/a...e-destinations

https://support.saily.com/hc/en-us/a...k-destinations

Japan
 

I would appreciate any recommendations or recent experiences with e sims for Japan.
A nephew with iPhone wants data only for 10 days.

Most recent info I found was 2023.

Thank you

We used Airalo in Japan, worked well, no problems. Trip was February/March of this year. I have used Airalo many times but for recent trips, which were to Europe, I have used other eSIM providers who were cheaper than Airalo. Those were Saily and Jetpac. I don’t anticipate using Airalo again unless their price comes down, the other providers are just as good and a bit cheaper.

I did two trips to Japan eariler this year and did esimjapan.com for both.

They have a 4G plan with a certain amount of full speed data per day then throttled, and also a 5G plan that's truly unlimited.

https://esimjapan.com/product/esim-j...mited-max-data

Same situation. Best deal I found was on trip.com. 10gb for 10days for under $6 (lots of other options available as well). We go to Japan next week so I can't personally vouch for it, but the reviews are good. Here is the link: https://us.trip.com/things-to-do/det...en-US&curr=USD

That's very interesting, that site is a general travel site which offers hotel, car and guided tour bookings and now eSIM packages.

Looks like all the deliveries are by QR code, so it's some kind of MVNO but you have to see which carriers and speeds you get in different countries.

Some of the prices look very competitive, more than the other MVNOs which typically offer regional or world eSIMs.

Please update the thread with your experiences, like the coverages and speeds, whether tethering worked, etc.