While we all put international travel on hold for a couple of years, Australians are heading overseas in greater and greater numbers with some 11.6 million overseas trips taken during 2024 alone.
Travelling with a mobile phone is getting a whole lot easier too, with easily-available eSIM plans making your travels much easier and pain-free. Forget the days of signing up to a dodgy SIM card deal at the airport: with an eSIM, you can sort out your communications before you go and hit the ground running.
With this in mind, Australian mobile communication company Simify is making it even easier, offering unlimited roaming data overseas without additional fees. It’s as simple as signing up through the website and choosing your intended destination and selecting the appropriate plan.
There’s an awful lot of options, but here’s just a few for popular destinations to give you a feel for what’s involved:
- Europe and UK – Unlimited eSIM data starts at $44 for 7 days, or $99 for a month. By comparison, a limited eSIM data plan includes 5GB for $25 for 7 days, or 30GB for $99 for 30 days.
- USA, Canada and Mexico – Unlimited eSIM data starts at $44 for 7 days, or $109 for a month. By comparison, a limited eSIM includes 5GB for $25 for 7 days, or 20GB for $75 for 30 days.
The comparisons are similar across other areas also.
Ultimately, the plan you prefer will come down to your needs – if you’re primarily hanging around areas with good WiFi service, you’ll probably opt for a low data plan (or just not bother at all), but if you’re doing a bit of travelling about, having some mobile data isn’t a bad idea. If you know you’re going to smash the data, though, with some WiFi-free Netflix, photo uploads, social media and more, the unlimited plans may make a lot more sense.
Activating an eSIM, regardless of whether it’s an unlimited or fixed data amount, couldn’t be easier. Choose your desired plan, purchase it through Simify, scan the QR card with your compatible phone and activate your service ready to go.
Any gotchas? Not really. From personal experience, the things to bear in mind with an eSIM overseas are these:
- You typically don’t get a phone number – these are SIMs for data use only. If you need to make and receive calls, you’re better off with a local SIM card from a telco that includes some airtime for minutes and texts, or using roaming with your Australian service.
- Depending on your carrier, you MAY be able to use the data on a travel eSIM to use Voice over Data, allowing you to use your Australian service overseas without roaming necessarily. However, this is fairly tricky and not well documented, and not worthwhile for most people.
- In some countries, the mobile networks used to deliver roaming eSIM services aren’t always the top-shelf networks. Data speed can be abhorrently slow or non-existent in some places, whereas local SIM users may have no difficulties. It’s luck of the draw.
- If you keep your home SIM on also, your phone will chew through a bit more battery life as it’s maintaining two network connections instead of one. Thus, if you don’t need it, it’s a good idea to keep your SIM from home turned off to keep your phone going a bit longer.
- If you need to text / call / stay in touch and don’t want to use your home SIM or get a proper local one, you can always use “Over The Top” apps like WhatsApp, Skype, etc. to stay in touch using your data connection.
When you’re headed overseas next, check out Simify and see if they’ve got something that can work for you!
