Say goodbye to international data roaming on your South African SIM

[Nat Quinn]

South Africans can finally say goodbye to expensive international data roaming rates, thanks to a range of companies now providing eSIMs targeted at users travelling overseas.

We tested two of these providers — Saily and Airalo — on a trip to Japan over December and found the process of installing an eSIM, buying data bundles, and using the service quick and easy.

Both Saily and Airalo require you to download their respective apps to your smartphone to get started.

After you have downloaded the app of your choice and created a user account, you can select from a long list of countries in which they provide mobile data services.

Hundreds of countries are available on both platforms, with data bundles starting at 1GB — valid for seven days — and going up to 20GB — valid for 30 days.

When purchasing a data bundle in the Saily app, we were presented with value-added data allocations.

This effectively let us purchase 25GB for R431 — which comes to R17.24 per GB.

Once we had selected the data bundles we wanted to use in Japan, each app provided instructions on how to install an eSIM that would be linked to the data bundle.

For our tests, an iPhone 15 Pro was used with the Saily app, while an iPhone 16 was used with the Airalo app.

In both cases, the installation was quick and simple. The apps provided instructions on installing the eSIMs, which took a few taps and under two minutes to complete.

Once we had installed the eSIMs, we then turned them on when we landed in Japan and the data bundles were automatically activated.

We also set our travel eSIMs to be the mobile data connection on each phone — ensuring our South African SIMs did not consume mobile data.

The table below shows the prices for the Saily and Airalo data bundles which were available for use in Japan at the time of writing.

Data Bundle (Validity)	Saily Price	Airalo Price
1GB (7 Days)	$3.99 (R75)	$4.50 (R85)
3GB (30 Days)	$6.99 (R131)	$8.50 (R160)
5GB (30 Days)	$9.99 (R187)	$11.50 (R216)
10GB (30 Days)	$15.99 (R300)	$18.00 (R338)
20GB (30 Days)	$22.99 (R431)	$26.00 (R488)

On an iPhone, turning an eSIM on or off is done by navigating to Settings > Mobile Service > SIMs. Selecting a SIM to be the primary provider of mobile data is done by navigating to Settings > Mobile Service > Mobile Data.

User experience

The user experience with both the Saily and Airalo eSIMs was good throughout our tests.

We stuck to the greater Tokyo area for our trip and had solid coverage and throughput. This included a number of subway stations, although there were points of patchiness during subway train rides.

Google Maps and Translate were the most-used apps during our tests, and these worked well throughout our travel.

Social media and video streaming were equally pleasant to use, and we only experienced one stint of content not loading during a night out in a very busy street with thousands of other people also using their smartphones.

An anecdotal finding during our tests was that the Saily eSIM primarily had us on an LTE network, while the Airalo eSIM was predominantly on a 5G network.

This did little to influence the user experience, however, as the speeds on LTE were more than adequate for our requirements.

The image below shows the result of a mobile data speed test using the Saily eSIM while on an LTE network.

You still need a phone number

It is important to note that with our test of Saily and Airalo, we focused exclusively on their mobile data services.

In fact, Saily states on its website it currently only offers mobile data solutions. Similarly, the Airalo eSIM we used for Japan also only provided a data connection.

Our South African SIMs cards were therefore left on and had roaming enabled for SMS and voice calls during the trip.

Roaming charges to receive SMS messages and phone calls on your South African number while overseas will vary based on your network and the country you are in.

Our South African network provider’s rates were as follows while in Japan:

• Local Call – R2.50 per minute

• International Call – R5.00 per minute

• SMS – R2.75 per SMS

• Data – R0.49 per MB

We were also offered a 1GB data bundle, valid for seven days, for R99 from our South African network provider when we landed in Japan.

This reinforced our decision to use the travel eSIMs as our primary source of mobile data.

 

source:Say goodbye to international data roaming on your South African SIM – MyBroadband

[Author]

Posts