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More and more people are ditching carrier roaming in favor of travel eSIMs
(www.androidauthority.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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Since way back in the 90s, everytime I stayed somewhere for longer than a week (or I really really needed mobile data) I would simply buy a local pay-as-you-go SIM for it.
This has been made even simpler to do with the advent of dual SIM phones were you can have a SIM for calls with your personal phone number and a different SIM for data.
Further, here in the EU ever since they passed some legislation some years ago, mobile operators can't charge extra for roaming within the EU so none of that is even needed anymore if you're just travelling withing the EU.
What exactly is the great advantage of eSIMs if you have a dual SIM phone?!
They are slowly phasing our sim card slots, my phone only has one sim card slot + eSIM. Without the eSIM, I'd be force to change or buy a new phone.
That's like saying that the advantage of DRM in media files is that consumers are forced to use it.
The only advantage for consumers I see for eSIMs is that they can be bought online and digitally delivered, so mild convenience, which is nice, but not quite as amazing or filling a great necessity as the OP tries to make it sound like.
Beyond that, well it creates new business models and is probably cheaper for mobile phone makers, which are advantages for others, but not for consumers since the barriers to entry in the mobile arena that make it prone to cartels aren't in the provision of SIMs, they're in things like radio spectrum licensing so eSIMs aren't going to cause a price revolution in that market.