Picture this: you’re lounging on a beach in Bali, sipping on your coconut water, and suddenly remember you have a Skype call with a client in an hour. Panic strikes! But then, you remember you’re a savvy digital nomad armed with the wonder that is an eSIM. Crisis averted! 🏖️💻
Being a digital nomad requires me to be online almost always. Whether it’s answering customer questions, creating content, or handling logistics I need to be connected to the internet. This can however be expensive as most countries outside of the EU charge an arm and a leg in data roaming fees.
Now, I should add that I write outside of the EU because as a Norwegian with a Norwegian cellphone carrier, I can roam for the same price in the EU as if I were in Norway. Pretty neat, but as soon I cross the border to i.e. Switzerland I am in trouble.
Before I solved this in places I was staying longer by buying a sim card in the country I visited and using a second phone. This cumbersome way of staying connected is however now something of the past. Let me introduce you to eSIM.
What’s an eSIM?
Before diving into the juicy benefits, let’s take a quick look at what an eSIM actually is. Imagine a SIM card that doesn’t believe in taking up physical space – it’s all digital, baby! It stands for ‘Embedded Subscriber Identity Module’, which is fancy talk for “This little chip is going to make your life way easier.”
There are several providers of eSIMs, but the one I have opted for is Airalo.
Why Airalo? Because I like it easy.
Yes, eSIMs have gotten quite easy to use but you still need to be able to know your way around the settings of your phone to use it.
That’s why I like Airalo. It’s as straightforward to install as it gets, and if you get stuck they have excellent customer service to help you out.
No wonder they have over 1 million users.
With eSIMs from Airalo, you just download their app and then buy and install one or more eSIMs from over 200 countries/regions. All from their app.
Easy.
And the cost saving of using eSIMs is amazing. Let’s use Switzerland as an example.
Last year in 2023, we visited Switzerland and the international data roaming charge was 1.25 NOK per MB. This equals about $0.125 per MB.
Let’s compare that with an Airalo eSIM in Switzerland. As you can see, I can for example get a 2GB package for $8 (and choosing a higher data plan lowers the cost per MB more)
If I were to use the same amount of data using my international data roaming plan through my cellphone carrier I would have paid $250!
Not anymore.
Thanks to the convenience and connectivity offered by eSIM technology, living the digital nomad life has never been easier.
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