This post is a “guest” posting by Mr. Snacks, at the request of Mrs. Snacks.
Telecommunications while abroad has always been a bit of a pain point for us. Travelling abroad usually meant putting our phones on airplane mode when we got on the plane and leaving cellular service turned off for the duration of the trip. Yes, we could have paid the roaming charges, but they can get ridiculous when you travel as much as we do (or did) and it was usually only a minor inconvenience and a nice way to not be tempted to respond to work emails while on vacation. On the occasions where it rose to the level of being a major inconvenience, we’d turn on cellular on one of our phones, pay the ridiculous US carrier daily roaming fees, and then turn it off as soon as humanly possible.
On longer trips and assuming your phone is unlocked (which ours are), we could buy a local SIM card, but by swapping the SIM in your phone, you lose access to your US phone number over Wi-Fi Calling. That’s fine for a week or two trip, but when you are travelling for months it means either constantly swapping SIM cards in the device to see if you have messages from home, or risk missing voicemails like “Hey, I noticed water coming out the front door of your house – maybe you should have someone look into that?” or “Hi, this is Elon Musk, I’ve heard you are really great and would like to offer you a ton of money to work a hour a week, but I need to hear from you today”. I’ll decline to comment on which of those calls is more likely.
In other words, the normal solutions came with significant trade-offs.
When we arrived in Mexico, we pretty much made a bee line for La Ventana with very little time or desire to take on anything more complicated than refueling and eating, so we made do with not having cell service during the day and just made sure we had plenty of music and audio books downloaded for the drive. That worked, but after spending a few days getting an injured Mrs. Snacks settled into our new house in La Paz, running around to stock it with food and other supplies, it was time for me to get myself a local SIM card.
Fortunately, being the nerd that I am, I had been researching options for weeks before we left and had a shiny new iPhone 12 I was excited to take out for a spin. Why does the new phone matter? Well, my previous phone was a 5 year old iPhone 7 that I replaced this fall when the iPhone 12 mini was released, finally giving me another option for a powerful phone that wasn’t the size of a surfboard. With iOS 13 and any device later than an iPhone XR, XS or XS Max (all three launched in October 2018), Apple introduced dual SIM capabilities into all iPhones, but with the caveat that there was only a tray for a single traditional physical SIM card and all other SIM cards had to be eSIMs.
Ideally, I would have gotten an eSIM from my US carrier, thus giving me the flexibility to use either a physical or eSIM abroad. Unfortunately, my current carrier in US, Xfinity Mobile, doesn’t support eSIMs so it meant I was on a hunt for an eSIM in Mexico. eSIMs are becoming more common in the US, Europe and Asia, but it’s still pretty hit or miss if carriers support them, so it was far from a sure thing.
My first stop was Apple’s website, where I was able to determine that there is only one carrier in Mexico that supports eSIMs on iPhones: AT&T Mexico. This was helpful to understand ahead of time because cell service in Mexico is dominated by Telcel and with my mediocre Spanish, I could have easily wasted days trying to explain what I was looking for to Telcel, only to be disappointed.
Doing a simple search for “AT&T Mexico” and “eSIM” led me to this page which essentially confirmed that yes, AT&T Mexico supports eSIMs on post-XR iPhones. More importantly, it allowed me to search for stores where I could get an eSIM (there are only two in La Paz). This was a really critical detail because, unlike in the US, in Mexico people typically use pre-paid SIM cards from a convenience store or grocery store. When I saw an AT&T person selling SIM cards at the Walmart and asked if she could sell me an eSIM, she looked at me like she had no idea what I was talking about before pulling out a physical SIM card – like I said, this is a pretty new technology that most people haven’t heard of and it isn’t widely available yet.
The next day, I went to one of the two AT&T stores listed on the AT&T page and asked for an eSIM. After the standard question about whether or not my phone was unlocked, they asked what model phone I had to confirm it was compatible (I’m pretty sure they didn’t believe me when I said I had an iPhone 12 and thought I was getting the number wrong in Spanish — it’s only been out for a little over two months in the US, I’m guessing mine might be the first one they’d seen). Eventually, I convinced them it was an unlocked and compatible phone, and they pulled out the magical eSIM I was looking for.
A few minutes later, after scanning a bar code on the eSIM with my camera and calling an activation number, I was up and running. There was a $150 peso activation fee (about $7.50 US) and I signed up for a $200 peso data plan that included 6GB of data (about $10 US) – so yes, just a tad cheaper than paying for US roaming.
What is the advantage to all this? Well, now my phone has two phone numbers on it: my US number with Xfinity Mobile, and a Mexican one from AT&T Mexico. My phone is set so all data will go over the Mexican SIM card and, when I’m on Wi-Fi, I can make a receive calls using my US number without having to swap cards (also, I still get voicemail notifications and texts) or pay for roaming. When I place a call, I can choose which number to use so if I’m calling a Mexican number I use the Mexican number, and if I’m calling someone in the US I use the US one. Xfinity Mobile only charges for data you use with no minimum usage per month so our US cell phone bill is effectively $0 while we are outside the US using data on the Mexican data plan (technically, there is a 1Gb minimum per account with Xfinity, but since we share an account with my in-laws, they pay the $15 and use the 1Gb while we are gone).
My hope is that the real beauty of this setup will be the next time we come to Mexico. When I go back to the US, I think all I’ll need to do is turn off the Mexican SIM and stop paying for data refills, but since the SIM is already on the phone and activated, when we come back again I should be able to go to AT&T’s web site, pay for a data plan and my eSIM will be ready the moment I arrive.
Since an iPhone can have up to 20 eSIMs loaded at a time (but only 2 active at a time), in theory, I’ll be able to follow this same process in virtually any country we travel in (assuming there is at least one carrier that supports eSIMs). Eventually, I could easily end up with several eSIMs on my phone for a variety of countries that I can turn on or off while we are there and pay for data on as-needed — all without a paperclip and always allowing me to be reachable by friends and family (not to mention, Elon Musk) at the same US number I’ve had for the last 20 years.
Please note: As an iPhone user, I’ve focused on iPhone’s here, but many Android devices also support dual SIM and eSIM capabilities, you’ll just have to make sure the carrier supports your device and it should work pretty much the same as I’ve described here.