I will be traveling to Spain from the US for about two weeks (family of four, 4 iphones) and wondering if it’s better to change my Verizon to an eSIM before I go and purchase a local Sim card in Barcelona.
Or if it’s better/possible To keep my Verizon Sim card but purchase an eSIM in Spain for two weeks
I do not want to incur any Verizon charges for international travel. Iphone 12
Any local recommended suppliers of eSIM (voice/texr/data. for travelers? Any idea of pricing
Answered your PM - hope it helps!
For what it's worth, my research a few months ago indicated that all the major Spanish carriers required eSIMs to be set up in person, in a shop.
My Spanish SIM is Vodafone. Their current offer is 25Gig for 10 euro. (SO CHEAP!)
Scudder, I set up mine from Orange last month on my own at home before my trip.
However on my recent trip, both the UAE and Jordan required it to be done in country.
Was the orange eSIM you got data only? Did you ever have a need to make phone calls to a landline. Also do you have any issues using FaceTime or iMessage w/ esim while in europe
We are in Spain right now and pre loaded an eSIM from the Airalo app. It was 12us for 5gb for 30d and for data only. Worked as soon as we landed and coverage/speed seems pretty good. Note that you don’t have a number but we communicate with everyone in our group (4) and with home using WhatsApp (including video calls). My daughter used mysim for similar price. Note that can only use 4g or lte not 5g and obviously the iPhones have to be newer ( eg iPhone 8 doesn’t have eSIM). Hope that helps!
CLKR:
I am planning on using the Airlo app and have it all set up for my time in Spain this month.
Thanks for posting your experiences with it.
My understanding was that your (Verizon) number works through the data connection via Airlo.
I thought I could keep my phone number, so this is a surprise.
@ veryspecialquilts
Ah, nope - to use your existing number you would have to "turn on" your Verizon SIM and incur the daily charge when doing so.
If you have an iPhone you will be able to continue to send and receive iMessages through your eSIM - in saying that be sure to ONLY send iMessages to addresses highlighted in BLUE and be sure, because SMS texts work only on cellular, turn off "Send as SMS" while you are out of the country.
Because we couldn’t receive imessages from home with the esim (cause your home carrier is turned off) we switched to using WhatsApp when in Europe because you can text message, voice call and video call using your eSIM data. Works great and super easy to switch when plane landed on tarmac and to refill data if needed. Everyone here in Spain seems to use WhatsApp…all our Airbnb hosts, welcome taxi, car rental (enterprise) restaurants, etc!!! No need for iMessage.
