December 23, 2025 • 8 mins
Want to hear something weird (in a good way) about...eSIMs?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hey, Ray, Hey Sagan, do you.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Want to hear something weird about accessing the Internet overseas? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Is this like a North Korea thing?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Is? It's not? I'm so sorry. It's still interesting though.
So I want to talk about a SIMS because I've
been a big fan of SIMS overseas in particular for
like a very very long time. Now. I also think
that it's something that not that I'm on the telco
beat so much anymore, but something that Australia has been
(00:42):
very slow to even just for SIMS to use in
our devices. It's a little bit more common now obviously,
but specifically when it comes to travel, because my hot
take of the day, Ray is that with our major
telco providers in Australia, I think that the roaming plans
are still too expensive for what they are.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Ooh, Now this is controversial because I just straight up
used the five dollars a day or five dollars? Is it?
Five dollars a day? Still?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Votaphone? It still is? It still is? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Actually, now that I say that out loud, five dollars
a day is not good anymore? Is it? Because I
remember traveling like back in the day and then accidentally
getting a fifteen hundred dollar phone bill. So the idea
of five dollars a day seemed fine. And now when
I think about it, like if you're away for a week,
(01:31):
you could get roaming plans better than like thirty five bucks.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
You definitely definitely can. And the thing was, I also
used to be a devotee to the Vodaphone five dollars
a day plan. I eventually went off Votaphone because of
the lack of courage in my own home, which was
we're going to be really real about tech. I think
it's really important to be real about tech. It was
during COVID when my mother in law was dying and
we could not get a good signal a lot of
the time, which was really important when you couldn't travel.
(01:56):
So it was very much a like, I guess I'm
going back to tel Stra because at least it was,
you know, much more reliable. But at the time their
roaming was also much more expensive. I think it was
more like the ten dollars a day. I think that
now there might be some five dollars for Telstra as well.
That definitely is for Optus, but all the time they
can be wetted to either like votaphone, what your plan
(02:18):
is and what the limitations on your plan are, which
might not be super useful when you're overseas, or there's
the weird zones and things like that just to be complicated.
So I don't know. I think that there are better options,
and it's why even though I'm currently on the Teltra network,
I have never used that overseas. I will always get
a local EM.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, right, so you've completely converted then, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
One hundred percent, and I have been for years. So
one of the big ones for me when I first
stopped using the votaphone one was when I was in
Ukraine and it was right before we're about to get
COVID lockdowns, and it was a big moment for me
because it is a country that is not in the EU.
You don't see like a lot of Australians going there,
and yet it was fast and easier and cheaper for
(03:01):
me to get an eSIM while I was on my
way to Chernobyl like tending off somebody else w and
I could get one in you know, five minutes or something.
So that's when I really started, when I was able
to travel again start using eSIMs so when I'm in
the US, and then most recently, and this is what
made me think of this. I was in Taiwan a
few weeks ago and I was actually gifted a shi
(03:24):
eSIM I can call it to try out, So not
a sponsored episode, but it was one of those things
I tried out and honestly, I was really really surprised
and really really happy with it.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So how do you actually use it? How does it work?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, so it's actually really really simple. I've also used
Houlafly before, which is one that I've used in the US.
These are kind of similar setups, but usually the whole
idea is that you can go on to a website.
Certainly was the case with Simmiphi, so where are you going?
You tell them where you're going, and then you can
get a plan for however long you're going for, whether
it's a few days, where it's a week. And usually
what I've found with across both brands actually is it
(03:59):
obviously get a little bit cheaper if you're having it
for longer, like they'll knock a few dollars off or
what have you. But what I really really liked this
time around with the Simmafi one is because we were
transferring through Hong Kong to get to Taiwan, and instead
of just having to lock myself into one country, they
had this option where it could be an area. So
(04:20):
the one that we got was Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.
You know, if you want to go on like place
some poker or something, which was super easy. I love
that you could just scan a QR code and they
would recommend that you kind of set it up before
you even leave the country, so like it's ready to
go as soon as you land, which worked seamlessly I
found with whole offly. Sometimes I would have to restart
(04:41):
with my device. I didn't have to do that this
time around, and it was just great, Like everything just
worked automatically the entire time. There was no dropouts. It
was unlimited, which is something that's like important to me
when I'm traveling, so I'm not wedded to whatever my
usual plan is. So it's just like, sure, I can
spend this amount of money and you know, I just
have Internet and don't need to worry about it.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
I'm going to ask all the silly questions here. So
what phone number do you have? Well, you're using it.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I wasn't using my phone number. I was just using
all internets, so which you know these days, I also
find wasn't so bad when I'm on you know, like
WhatsApp and different things anyway. Yeah, I also meant because
I was away from work, no one could call me
that I didn't want to have for me, which is right.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
So because it wasn't a work trip, you didn't want
to be contacted on your number anyway, so it was fine.
But do you have the option to use your phone number?
Like if if you've got a physical sim in your phone,
can you use it concurrently with the asim?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
You can, You'll see it in your Apple settings, So
there are or you know, one of the phone that
you're using, options to turn lines on and off, so
you could if you really need your phone number, you
could still have the option to turn that back on.
I am not across it enough to know if you
had copped fee, so that I would say you probably will, right,
So that's sort of the onside to that, which is
also a good argument for you know what, I wanted
(06:04):
to have access to all of my usual stuff on
my phone, and I would rather just pay whatever Telstra
or Voterphone or fair enough, like completely valid argument, that's
not important for me.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
So look, I have a prediction that it will probably
be less than five years before all phones are using
a SIMS instead of physical sims anyway, so this might
be something that we never need to get used to.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah. Absolutely, And when it came to the price, I
did find that. So I got one that was for
fifteen days, which would usually be sixty nine dollars, so
it works out to four dollars sixty per day, so
it does come in that slightly bit cheaper as well. Again,
is it enough to make a difference if you're already
on voter Phone? Maybe not. But again for me, unlimited
(06:48):
wasn't bad. So I quite liked that, and I just
think that it was just worth it for me, especially
because you can do this anywhere in the world. You
don't have to deal with zones in cavea and caps
and different things like that.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
I just liked it, right, hot take, I like to
think I liked it.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
I liked to think. I like to think I like
the thing, and I think that in Australia we can
be doing better.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Oh that's the hot take?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Or yeah, yeah, and I'm sure, you know, not working
for a telco myself, perhaps you know, trying to operate
and giving people access to their number and the data
and all that overseas probably actually isn't cheap, So that's
worth keeping in mind, I guess. But also I don't know,
man eatims at this point just really aren't new. So
I think that we can we can be doing better
(07:35):
as a nation.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
I think an overarching statement of ossie telcos can just
simply do better is a blanket accurate statement.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
And look, to be fair, they might have a little
bit more on the mind right now than people traveling overseas,
like when there's people that can't even reach triple zero,
perhaps that is, you know, a more important concern right now.
But once they you know, dealt with that, I would
like to present, please be a little bit more globally
competitive when it comes to trouble.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
I'd like to believe that the biggest companies in the
country can walk and chew gum at the same time,
take and we can focus on on the very important
issue of making sure that we have connectivity overseas as
well as making sure that people can reach triple zero
when they need to.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Add a good price point a mine one exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
And that's it for this episode of weird Tech. If
you have any weird tech that you would like us
to cover, or if some of your tech is being
weird we want to hear about it. You can hit
us up on all social media platforms at weird Tech Media.
We're a weird Tech Media production and a proud member
of the iHeartRadio Network. This episode was edited by the
podcast Butler. Please remember to subscribe on your favorite podcast
(08:48):
platforms so you don't miss the next episode, and until
next time, stay weird
Hey, Ray, Hey Sagan, do you.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Want to hear something weird about accessing the Internet overseas? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Is this like a North Korea thing?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Is? It's not? I'm so sorry. It's still interesting though.
So I want to talk about a SIMS because I've
been a big fan of SIMS overseas in particular for
like a very very long time. Now. I also think
that it's something that not that I'm on the telco
beat so much anymore, but something that Australia has been
(00:42):
very slow to even just for SIMS to use in
our devices. It's a little bit more common now obviously,
but specifically when it comes to travel, because my hot
take of the day, Ray is that with our major
telco providers in Australia, I think that the roaming plans
are still too expensive for what they are.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Ooh, Now this is controversial because I just straight up
used the five dollars a day or five dollars? Is it?
Five dollars a day? Still?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Votaphone? It still is? It still is? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Actually, now that I say that out loud, five dollars
a day is not good anymore? Is it? Because I
remember traveling like back in the day and then accidentally
getting a fifteen hundred dollar phone bill. So the idea
of five dollars a day seemed fine. And now when
I think about it, like if you're away for a week,
(01:31):
you could get roaming plans better than like thirty five bucks.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
You definitely definitely can. And the thing was, I also
used to be a devotee to the Vodaphone five dollars
a day plan. I eventually went off Votaphone because of
the lack of courage in my own home, which was
we're going to be really real about tech. I think
it's really important to be real about tech. It was
during COVID when my mother in law was dying and
we could not get a good signal a lot of
the time, which was really important when you couldn't travel.
(01:56):
So it was very much a like, I guess I'm
going back to tel Stra because at least it was,
you know, much more reliable. But at the time their
roaming was also much more expensive. I think it was
more like the ten dollars a day. I think that
now there might be some five dollars for Telstra as well.
That definitely is for Optus, but all the time they
can be wetted to either like votaphone, what your plan
(02:18):
is and what the limitations on your plan are, which
might not be super useful when you're overseas, or there's
the weird zones and things like that just to be complicated.
So I don't know. I think that there are better options,
and it's why even though I'm currently on the Teltra network,
I have never used that overseas. I will always get
a local EM.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, right, so you've completely converted then, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
One hundred percent, and I have been for years. So
one of the big ones for me when I first
stopped using the votaphone one was when I was in
Ukraine and it was right before we're about to get
COVID lockdowns, and it was a big moment for me
because it is a country that is not in the EU.
You don't see like a lot of Australians going there,
and yet it was fast and easier and cheaper for
(03:01):
me to get an eSIM while I was on my
way to Chernobyl like tending off somebody else w and
I could get one in you know, five minutes or something.
So that's when I really started, when I was able
to travel again start using eSIMs so when I'm in
the US, and then most recently, and this is what
made me think of this. I was in Taiwan a
few weeks ago and I was actually gifted a shi
(03:24):
eSIM I can call it to try out, So not
a sponsored episode, but it was one of those things
I tried out and honestly, I was really really surprised
and really really happy with it.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So how do you actually use it? How does it work?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, so it's actually really really simple. I've also used
Houlafly before, which is one that I've used in the US.
These are kind of similar setups, but usually the whole
idea is that you can go on to a website.
Certainly was the case with Simmiphi, so where are you going?
You tell them where you're going, and then you can
get a plan for however long you're going for, whether
it's a few days, where it's a week. And usually
what I've found with across both brands actually is it
(03:59):
obviously get a little bit cheaper if you're having it
for longer, like they'll knock a few dollars off or
what have you. But what I really really liked this
time around with the Simmafi one is because we were
transferring through Hong Kong to get to Taiwan, and instead
of just having to lock myself into one country, they
had this option where it could be an area. So
(04:20):
the one that we got was Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.
You know, if you want to go on like place
some poker or something, which was super easy. I love
that you could just scan a QR code and they
would recommend that you kind of set it up before
you even leave the country, so like it's ready to
go as soon as you land, which worked seamlessly I
found with whole offly. Sometimes I would have to restart
(04:41):
with my device. I didn't have to do that this
time around, and it was just great, Like everything just
worked automatically the entire time. There was no dropouts. It
was unlimited, which is something that's like important to me
when I'm traveling, so I'm not wedded to whatever my
usual plan is. So it's just like, sure, I can
spend this amount of money and you know, I just
have Internet and don't need to worry about it.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
I'm going to ask all the silly questions here. So
what phone number do you have? Well, you're using it.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I wasn't using my phone number. I was just using
all internets, so which you know these days, I also
find wasn't so bad when I'm on you know, like
WhatsApp and different things anyway. Yeah, I also meant because
I was away from work, no one could call me
that I didn't want to have for me, which is right.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
So because it wasn't a work trip, you didn't want
to be contacted on your number anyway, so it was fine.
But do you have the option to use your phone number?
Like if if you've got a physical sim in your phone,
can you use it concurrently with the asim?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
You can, You'll see it in your Apple settings, So
there are or you know, one of the phone that
you're using, options to turn lines on and off, so
you could if you really need your phone number, you
could still have the option to turn that back on.
I am not across it enough to know if you
had copped fee, so that I would say you probably will, right,
So that's sort of the onside to that, which is
also a good argument for you know what, I wanted
(06:04):
to have access to all of my usual stuff on
my phone, and I would rather just pay whatever Telstra
or Voterphone or fair enough, like completely valid argument, that's
not important for me.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
So look, I have a prediction that it will probably
be less than five years before all phones are using
a SIMS instead of physical sims anyway, so this might
be something that we never need to get used to.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah. Absolutely, And when it came to the price, I
did find that. So I got one that was for
fifteen days, which would usually be sixty nine dollars, so
it works out to four dollars sixty per day, so
it does come in that slightly bit cheaper as well. Again,
is it enough to make a difference if you're already
on voter Phone? Maybe not. But again for me, unlimited
(06:48):
wasn't bad. So I quite liked that, and I just
think that it was just worth it for me, especially
because you can do this anywhere in the world. You
don't have to deal with zones in cavea and caps
and different things like that.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
I just liked it, right, hot take, I like to
think I liked it.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
I liked to think. I like to think I like
the thing, and I think that in Australia we can
be doing better.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Oh that's the hot take?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Or yeah, yeah, and I'm sure, you know, not working
for a telco myself, perhaps you know, trying to operate
and giving people access to their number and the data
and all that overseas probably actually isn't cheap, So that's
worth keeping in mind, I guess. But also I don't know,
man eatims at this point just really aren't new. So
I think that we can we can be doing better
(07:35):
as a nation.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
I think an overarching statement of ossie telcos can just
simply do better is a blanket accurate statement.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
And look, to be fair, they might have a little
bit more on the mind right now than people traveling overseas,
like when there's people that can't even reach triple zero,
perhaps that is, you know, a more important concern right now.
But once they you know, dealt with that, I would
like to present, please be a little bit more globally
competitive when it comes to trouble.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
I'd like to believe that the biggest companies in the
country can walk and chew gum at the same time,
take and we can focus on on the very important
issue of making sure that we have connectivity overseas as
well as making sure that people can reach triple zero
when they need to.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Add a good price point a mine one exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
And that's it for this episode of weird Tech. If
you have any weird tech that you would like us
to cover, or if some of your tech is being
weird we want to hear about it. You can hit
us up on all social media platforms at weird Tech Media.
We're a weird Tech Media production and a proud member
of the iHeartRadio Network. This episode was edited by the
podcast Butler. Please remember to subscribe on your favorite podcast
(08:48):
platforms so you don't miss the next episode, and until
next time, stay weird
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