My favorite method to get international cell service is by using eSIMs. This is because it allows you to take advantage of local data rates and avoid roaming fees while still using the same phone number you have at home. This is perfect for digital nomads who spend months at a time in foreign countries.
The only trick to getting this method to work is making sure that your cell phone provider doesn’t charge you any roaming fees, and they don’t like to let you out of those easily!
I’ve only ever done this with AT&T but from what I’ve heard from digital nomad friends, the process is similar with any other American provider like Verizon.
Here are the steps:
- Turn off data roaming setting on the phone. If you have an iPhone this is settings > cellular > cellular data options > data roaming
- Call/Chat your provider and have them disable ALL international roaming on the account level, both voice and data roaming. Just doing #1 is not sufficient. Many customer service agents do not know how to do this or do it incorrectly. I recommend you try doing it over chat if possible, so you have a transcript if they mess it up. This has happened to me before and I got the roaming fees refunded by showing that they were supposed to be turned off. If you can, you should ask to speak to someone on the international team. If they say they can’t do it or don’t know how, call back and try to get a different agent.
- Turn on “Wi-Fi calling” on the phone.
- Purchase Airalo eSIM
- Install Airalo eSIM using the instructions in the app. Name it something recognizable
- Keep your primary number switched “ON”
- Set your Cellular data to the Airalo eSIM
- If prompted, keep your voice, SMS, iMessage, Facetime, etc set to your primary line.
This very long reddit thread has a lot of the trial and error myself and others have gone through to get this to work. If you get stuck, check there or comment below!
When everything is setup correctly, we should see “AT&T Wi-Fi Calling over Cellular Data” or “AT&T over Cellular Data” when abroad and “AT&T over wifi” when connected to Wi-Fi. If you don’t see this, YOU DON’T HAVE IT SET UP RIGHT!