You know, Herman, I was looking at my phone the other day—it is a February morning in twenty twenty-six—and I realized I haven't actually touched a physical SIM card in almost three years. I remember the days of hunting for a paperclip or a specialized little metal tool just to swap networks. It feels like one of those technologies that just evaporated when we weren't looking, like physical car keys or wired headphones.
Herman Poppleberry at your service, and you are right, Corn. The physical SIM card is effectively a museum piece for most flagship smartphone users today. It is a classic case of a legacy technology being phased out by sheer convenience and the relentless pursuit of internal device space. Every square millimeter inside a chassis is prime real estate for battery or haptics. But our housemate Daniel sent us a prompt today that really digs into the next layer of that transition. He is looking at the explosion of the eSIM market, especially for international roaming, and asking if we are heading toward a world where the big mobile network operators—the ones with the towers and the multi-billion dollar logos—are just the background infrastructure while we all buy our service from these global eSIM aggregators.
It is a great question, and honestly, a timely one. Daniel was mentioning how his social media feeds are just plastered with ads for truly global eSIMs that promise local rates everywhere from Albania to Zambia. It makes you wonder: if I can just download a profile that works in London, New York, and Jerusalem for a flat monthly fee, why would I ever walk into a carrier store and sign a two-year contract again? Why deal with the credit checks and the "free" tablet that actually costs twenty dollars a month for service?
You've hit on the key point. And to answer Daniel's first question—do truly global eSIMs exist that work both locally and internationally for a reasonable fee? The answer is a very nuanced yes, but with some major technical and economic caveats that most people do not realize. We have definitely moved past the era where you had to pay ten dollars a megabyte for roaming—thank goodness—but the dream of a single, cheap, global subscription is still fighting against some pretty stiff reality.
Well, let's start there. Because when I look at apps like Airalo or Holafly or Nomad, or even the newer ones like BetterRoaming that have gained traction in the last year, they all claim to have these "Global" plans. But when you actually dig into the fine print, the global ones are often significantly more expensive than the country-specific ones. If I buy a plan for just Italy, it is dirt cheap. If I buy the "Global" plan that includes Italy, the price triples. Why is that? If it is all just digital bits and software-defined networking, why does the geography still matter so much in twenty twenty-six?
It comes down to what is called the interconnect agreement. Even now, the cellular world is basically a massive, messy web of bilateral contracts. When an eSIM provider like Airalo sells you a global plan, they are not actually a carrier. They do not own a single cell tower. They are what we call an aggregator or a high-level Mobile Virtual Network Operator, or MVNO. They have gone out and negotiated wholesale rates with hundreds of different carriers around the world.
So they are basically a travel agent for data.
That's a perfect analogy. And just like a travel agent, they have to pay a wholesale price to the airline, or in this case, the network operator. Some countries have very cheap wholesale rates because their domestic markets are hyper-competitive—think of India, Italy, or parts of Southeast Asia. Others, like the United States, Canada, or Switzerland, are notoriously expensive for wholesalers to access. When an eSIM provider creates a global plan, they have to "average out" those costs. They cannot easily charge you one price in Rome and a different price when you take the train to Zurich without making the user experience confusing. So, you end up paying a premium so that the provider does not lose money when you happen to be in a high-cost country. They are essentially selling you an insurance policy against high roaming rates.
That makes sense from a business perspective, but there is a technical side to this that I think we should talk about, because I have noticed that when I use a roaming eSIM, the latency is sometimes terrible. I will be in Tokyo, trying to load a map, and it takes five seconds to even start the request. My phone thinks I am in a different country entirely. I have had websites serve me ads in Polish while I am standing in the middle of Shinjuku. Why does that happen?
Oh, I am so glad you noticed that, Corn! That is the secret frustration of the current eSIM era. It is called home routing. Most of these global eSIM providers route all your data back through a central server, or a gateway, in a specific country. This is often because the roaming agreement requires the data to be authenticated by the "home" network. So, let us say you buy a global eSIM from a company that uses a core network based in Warsaw or Hong Kong. Even if you are standing in the middle of Paris, every time you load a website, your data travels from your phone in Paris, all the way to that server in Poland, out to the open internet, back to Poland, and then finally back to your phone in Paris.
That is wild. No wonder the ping times are like five hundred or six hundred milliseconds. It is literally circling the globe just to check my email or see if the cafe is open.
That's right. It is what we call "tromboning." The data path looks like a giant trombone slide. And that is the primary difference between a travel eSIM and a true local subscription. A local provider uses what is called "local breakout," where your data hits the local internet exchange immediately. Now, in twenty twenty-six, some of the high-end global eSIM providers are starting to implement regional gateways—they might have one in Singapore, one in Amsterdam, and one in Virginia—to fix this. But it is expensive to maintain that infrastructure. So when Daniel asks if these global eSIMs are the ultimate solution, the answer is they are getting there, but for things like cloud gaming, professional video calls, or anything where latency matters, that "home routing" lag can still be a total dealbreaker.
So, let us look at the second part of Daniel's question. Does this signal the end of buying subscriptions directly from the mobile network operators? I mean, if I am a consumer, I do not care about interconnect agreements or home routing. I just want my phone to work. If these third-party apps provide a better user experience—if I can buy data in three taps instead of talking to a salesperson—why would anyone stick with the big guys?
This is where the power dynamic gets really interesting. The big mobile network operators, the MNOs, are in a bit of a bind. On one hand, they love the wholesale revenue. Selling massive blocks of data to an eSIM aggregator is easy money with zero customer service overhead. They do not have to worry about your billing disputes or your broken screen; Airalo or Nomad handles that. But on the other hand, they are terrified of becoming what the industry calls a "dumb pipe."
Right, because if they are just the infrastructure, they lose the relationship with the customer. They cannot upsell you on a family plan, or a Netflix bundle, or a new phone upgrade every twelve months.
Precisely. They become like the water company or the power grid. Nobody cares who their power provider is as long as the lights stay on and the price is fair. But the MNOs have spent decades and billions of dollars building brands like Verizon, Vodafone, or T-Mobile. They want you to feel a sense of loyalty to the "magenta" or the "red." What we are seeing now is a bifurcation of the market. The big carriers are trying to launch their own digital-only sub-brands to compete with the eSIM startups. They are trying to offer the same "three-tap" experience, but keeping you on their own core network to avoid that latency we talked about.
I have seen that. It is like they are trying to disrupt themselves before someone else does it for them. But isn't there a regulatory hurdle here too? I remember we talked about this briefly in an earlier episode, maybe around episode four hundred or so, about how different countries have very different laws about who can actually buy a phone number.
You have a great memory, Corn. Yes, the "Know Your Customer" laws, or KYC, are a huge barrier to a truly frictionless global eSIM. In many countries—think of Germany, Turkey, or Thailand—you are legally required to provide a passport or a local identification to activate a cellular line. This is meant to prevent crime and anonymous burner phones, but it makes the one-click global eSIM dream very difficult.
So how do the eSIM apps get around that? I have bought eSIMs for dozens of countries and I rarely have to upload my passport.
Most of them only provide data. That is the loophole. If you do not have a traditional phone number attached to the SIM—one that can send and receive short message service or make public switched telephone network voice calls—the regulations in many jurisdictions are much more relaxed. That is why most travel eSIMs are data-only. You use WhatsApp, Signal, or FaceTime for your calls, and you just use the eSIM for the data pipe. But Daniel's prompt is about a total replacement of the MNO subscription. If you want a real, local phone number that can receive short message service codes from your bank or your government services, you usually still have to deal with a local carrier and their identity verification process.
That feels like a significant missing piece. If I cannot get my bank's two-factor authentication codes on my global eSIM, it is not a full replacement yet. I am still tethered to my "home" number just for the sake of identity. But let's look at the infrastructure side. Daniel asked if we are approaching an era where MNOs simply provide the infrastructure for eSIM providers. How close are we to that actually being the dominant reality?
We are closer than the big carriers would like to admit. In the industry, we call this the "wholesale-led model." Think about how the internet works. You might pay a local company for your fiber connection, but they are often just leasing lines from a much larger backbone provider like Lumen or Zayo. We are seeing the same thing happen with cellular towers. In many parts of the world, the companies that own the towers are actually separate from the companies that provide the cellular service.
Wait, really? So the logo on the tower might not even be the company I pay my bill to?
Frequently, yes! There are these massive companies called "tower-cos"—like American Tower or Cellnex—that just build and maintain the physical steel, the power supply, and the cooling. Then they lease space on that tower to three or four different carriers. So the MNOs are already moving toward an "asset-light" model. The next logical step, which is what Daniel is pointing toward, is that the MNOs stop caring about the retail customer entirely. They just focus on the radio access network and the spectrum. They become "Wholesale Operators."
But that sounds like a race to the bottom for them, doesn't it? If they are just selling bulk data to aggregators, their margins are going to get squeezed until there is nothing left.
That is the big fear. But here is the counter-argument: it is much more efficient. If a carrier does not have to spend billions on marketing, Super Bowl ads, retail stores, and massive call centers, they can be much more profitable even at lower margins per gigabyte. We are seeing this shift in the automotive industry too. Some car manufacturers are now acting as the eSIM provider for their vehicles. When you buy a modern car in twenty twenty-six, it comes with a global data plan built-in for the navigation and the entertainment system. The car company is the one negotiating with the carriers behind the scenes. You never even know which network you are on. Your car might be using AT&T in the suburbs and switching to a local rural provider in the mountains, and it is all invisible to you.
That is a great point. It is becoming invisible. And if it is invisible, the brand of the carrier doesn't matter. But what about the technology itself? I have been reading about something called iSIM, with an "i." Is that different from the eSIMs we are using now?
Oh, iSIM is the next evolution, and it is going to accelerate everything Daniel is asking about. So, an eSIM is still a physical chip—it is just a tiny, tiny chip soldered onto the motherboard of your phone. An iSIM, or Integrated SIM, actually moves the SIM functionality directly into the main processor of the device—the System on a Chip. It takes up virtually zero space and uses almost no power.
So it is not even a separate chip anymore? It is just a few lines of code inside the central processing unit?
Essentially, yes. It is a secure enclave within the processor. This is huge because it means every single connected device, from your toothbrush to your glasses to your smart watch, can have cellular connectivity without adding any bulk or cost. When you have billions of iSIM devices, the idea of managing individual carrier subscriptions for each one becomes absurd. You cannot go to a Verizon store to get a plan for your smart toaster. You need a centralized, global platform to manage all those connections.
So in that world, the aggregators that Daniel is talking about become the essential layer. They are the ones who can manage ten billion devices across five hundred different networks with one application programming interface.
That's right. And the MNOs will have to decide if they want to be the ones running those platforms or if they are content just being the ones who own the spectrum and the hardware. It is a classic platform-versus-utility battle.
It reminds me a bit of what happened with the airlines. You have the companies that own the planes and do the flying—the Delta's and the Lufthansa's—but most people book through Expedia, Kayak, or Google Flights. The airlines hate it because they lose the direct connection and the ability to sell you a credit card, but for the consumer, the aggregation is just too convenient to ignore.
That is a perfect comparison. And just like the airlines, the carriers are trying to fight back by offering loyalty points and bundled services. But at the end of the day, if I am traveling or if I just want a simple, transparent monthly bill, the aggregator is going to win. And there is one more thing that is going to blow this wide open by the end of this year: satellite-to-cell technology.
Oh, right! We have been hearing about this for a while. Like what Starlink and some of the other companies are doing with direct-to-cell service. Is that actually ready for prime time?
It is getting there. In twenty twenty-four and twenty twenty-five, it was mostly for emergency short message service and basic texting. But here in early twenty twenty-six, we are seeing the first commercial data plans that allow for basic web browsing and email directly via satellite on a standard smartphone. No special antenna required.
That is a massive shift. So, instead of a patchwork of five hundred carriers, you might have three or four global satellite networks that provide the base layer of connectivity everywhere on Earth.
And that is the ultimate global eSIM. A satellite provider doesn't care about national borders. They do not have to negotiate with a local carrier in the middle of the Sahara Desert. They are the network. The satellite providers are going to be the ultimate global eSIM players. Now, they won't replace five-G or six-G in cities—the bandwidth just isn't there yet—but they provide a "global floor." You will have a base level of connectivity everywhere, and your phone will automatically switch to a local high-speed tower when one is available. The handoff between those layers will be handled by the eSIM or iSIM profile.
It sounds like we are moving toward a world of seamless connectivity where the consumer doesn't even have to think about it. But I wonder about the downside. If we move away from local carriers, do we lose that local accountability? If my service goes out in Jerusalem or London, I can go down to the store and complain to a human. If my global eSIM provider is a startup in San Francisco or a satellite company in orbit, who do I talk to when my data stops working?
That is the classic trade-off of the digital era, isn't it? We trade local accountability for global convenience. We have seen this with almost every other industry. But I think there is another risk, which is the risk of a single point of failure. If one of these major global aggregators has a technical glitch or a security breach, they could potentially knock out connectivity for millions of people across dozens of countries simultaneously. We saw a version of this with the big cloud outages a few years back. If the "authentication server" for a global eSIM goes down, it doesn't matter how many towers are near you; your phone won't be allowed on the network.
That is a scary thought. We have seen how fragile the internet backbone can be. If the cellular layer becomes just as centralized, a single mistake could be catastrophic. But to Daniel's question about how close we are to this becoming a reality, I would say we are in the middle of the transition right now. In twenty twenty-six, we are seeing the first generation of truly competitive global eSIM plans that are actually usable as a primary subscription. They are not perfect yet—the latency and the Know Your Customer issues are still there—but the momentum is clearly moving away from the traditional carrier model.
I agree. If you look at the numbers, the "travel eSIM" market has grown by over four hundred percent in the last three years. People are getting used to the idea that their "home" carrier is just one of many options.
So, if you were Daniel, would you ditch your local carrier right now and go for one of these global solutions?
Hmm, it depends on your lifestyle. If you are a digital nomad or someone who travels across borders once a month—like many people do in Europe or even here in the Middle East—it is starting to make a lot of sense. You can get a global plan for around fifty or sixty dollars a month now that gives you a decent bucket of data in a hundred countries. But if you mostly stay in one place, the local carriers still have the home-court advantage. They can offer better latency, better local support, and usually better pricing for high-volume data. If you are a heavy user who watches four-kay video on the bus, a local five-G plan is still going to beat a global eSIM every time. But that gap is closing every single year.
It is fascinating to think about. It is almost like the phone number itself is becoming an anachronism. If we are all using data-based messaging and global eSIMs, the idea of a ten-digit number tied to a specific geographic region feels like a relic of the twentieth century. Why do I have a "New York" area code when I haven't lived there in a decade?
It really is. We are moving toward a global identity model rather than a local phone number model. Your connectivity will be tied to you—to your biometric identification or your secure enclave—not to your physical location. And that is exactly what Daniel was sensing. The mobile network operators are becoming the pipes, and we are the ones who will decide which platform we want to use to manage those pipes.
Well, this has been an incredible deep dive. I feel like I understand the chips in my phone a lot better now, even if I never actually see them. And before we wrap up, I just want to say, if you are listening and you are finding these deep dives helpful, we would really appreciate it if you could leave a review on your podcast app. It genuinely helps other people discover the show and keeps us going.
It really does. We love hearing from you and seeing the show grow. And if you have a weird prompt of your own—something that has been on your mind while you were staring at your phone or traveling—head over to myweirdprompts dot com and send it our way through the contact form. We read every single one.
Thanks again to Daniel for this prompt. It was a great follow-up to our previous discussion about the death of the physical SIM. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and at myweirdprompts dot com where we have our full archive of over five hundred episodes.
This has been My Weird Prompts. I am Herman Poppleberry.
And I am Corn. Thanks for listening, everyone. We will see you in the next one.
Goodbye!
