I'm thinking, for a change, of not buying a local SIM (or eSIM) for my upcoming trip to Switzerland. It's only ten days, so if I use data sparingly and stick only to wifi on some days, I should be able to use my Australian number on Telstra's $10/day international roaming day pass, and not spend much more than a new SIM. Hmmm worth a try I think.
OK in the end I decided to buy an eSIM for Switzerland from Airolo. Will be interesting to see how it goes. Will be the first time I've properly used an eSIM – I had one in the USA in 2022 but for whatever reason it couldn't play nicely with my existing SIM, which had to be removed from the phone for the duration of the trip. #Travel
@timrichards I'm on telstra prepaid and will be using an international roaming pack for the couple of weeks of our next trip. $25 for 4GB, 50mins calls and 50 texts, with a 14 day expiry. I'm not a big data user, will download maps beforehand, and will use wi-fi as much as possible so this will be plenty for me.
@timrichards I have been looking into this recently for my upcoming trip to the UK, as for security (and laziness) reasons I want to keep my Australian phone number while I’m over there for the month.
Apparently Belong (a Telstra subsidiary) has a $30 for 15 days roaming pack, with unlimited SMS, 3GB data and 150 minutes of international calls, which seems quite competitive compared to $10/day on Telstra.
Vodafone has $5/day roaming and you just get to use your existing Australian plan for calls, SMS & data which might be more competitive if you want more data and don’t want local eSIM hassles to go with that
@bgrinter@ThermiteBeGiants I used the Telstra version in my last few days in Europe last year, as the SIM card I'd bought wouldn't operate in Serbia. Worked well.
@timrichards how much data/day do you generally find you use while travelling? We're off to Spain/Portugal next month for a month. I presume my data use will be considerably higher than at home
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