PSA: International Roaming Is Worse than Local/Travel SIMs

BigBoy47 on 15/03/2023 - 17:22
Last edited 09/04/2023 - 23:10 by 1 other user

This may be common knowledge, but it took me by surprise when traveling — using international roaming is significantly slower than local SIMs.

Before my recent trip I set up Optus pre-paid and Felix SIMs with int'l roaming expecting that they would be good enough for my trip. The problem is that all roaming SIMs route your traffic back to Australia1 before going to the Internet. This is annoying because you get Australian results when searching for stuff overseas, but more importantly speeds are heavily neutered — on the Optus SIM I consistently struggled to get >1Mbps with full bars on 4G (with a global iPhone). Speeds were pretty bad the whole way through my trip in Europe and east Asia (Japan, Korea); I never saw a speed test over 5Mbps.

Felix (vodafone) tended to have better speeds than my Optus pre-paid service, but when I tried travel eSIMs from travel services (Airalo and Ubigi) my speeds were much better despite usually being connected to the same networks. (In Europe Airalo routes traffic via Amsterdam, and in east Asia Airalo and Ubigi go via Singapore.) I imagine actual local SIM cards would have even better speeds.

That being said, the speeds on Optus were still usually good enough to e.g. look up map directions, so if you're not phone addicted while traveling like I am then the Optus pre-paid deal may be the best roaming deal around.

tldr prefer travel/local SIMs instead of international roaming if speed is important for you

  1. I'm not sure if this is actually true, but you are definitely assigned an Aussie IP and speed/latency are definitely degraded ↩

Travel International Roaming Travel SIM Card

Comments

  • askbargain on 15/03/2023 - 17:42
    +2

    same reason why there's no great firewall when you roam in china

  • dtc on 15/03/2023 - 17:52
    +1

    Speed is slower if the roaming agreement between Optus and the local provider puts the Optus roaming on a slower bandwidth; but otherwise the connection is the same. So some countries may be better than others simply due to the agreements in place. Indeed, if you go from a low bandwidth country to a high bandwidth country (say Italy to almost anywhere else) you might have faster downloads/uploads

    However latency is higher because signals are routed through Australia / home network.

    Of course, end of the day the higher latency shows up as a slower connection

    • BigBoy47 on 15/03/2023 - 17:57

      Yeah this makes sense, the Optus $20 roaming deal seemed a little too good to be true. Reckon it's possible their prepaid roaming is inferior to their postpaid roaming?

      Aussie roaming SIMs seemed like a better deal to me too since they tend to have agreements with multiple networks in destination countries — all three in the case of Japan

      • QFFlyer on 15/03/2023 - 21:55

        I've got no experience of Optus prepaid, but my postpaid SIM only (the golden deal from a couple of years ago that was $40 per month and included unlimited SMS, incoming/outgoing calls and 4GB data) works perfectly.

        The only issue I have is that sometimes it can take a fair while to actually connect to a local network on arrival wherever you're going. I have a UK prepaid as a second SIM in my phone (for UK bank 2FA codes) and it almost always connects to a local carrier more quickly than my Optus SIM does.

        Last year, in the US, Optus wouldn't connect at all - June I was there and it worked fine, August it wouldn't roam at all (although it had been roaming in Singapore, UK, Finland and Netherlands already on that same trip). No joke it finally picked up service while I was at the airport waiting to leave the US (but worked fine following that again in the UK & Singapore, before returning to Aus). Haven't had any further issues with it since.

    • illumination on 28/08/2024 - 14:10

      Indeed, if you go from a low bandwidth country to a high bandwidth country (say Italy to almost anywhere else) you might have faster downloads/uploads

      What does that mean? Italy is a country known to de-prioritise the bandwidth for roaming/travel SIMs?

  • bobokingdom on 15/03/2023 - 18:08
    +1

    That also means your Australian Apps (some banks or ebay) will continuous to work if you use roaming. Alternatively, you may need to use VPN to access these services.

    • BigBoy47 on 15/03/2023 - 18:25
      +1

      That's true, I'd personally prefer to use my own VPN for those apps but it's probably a better solution for most telco customers

  • JimmyF on 15/03/2023 - 20:25
    -2

    PSA: International Roaming Is Worse than Local/Travel SIMs

    This may be common knowledge

    Ummm certainly is! /thread

    • BigBoy47 on 16/03/2023 - 15:48
      +1

      It wasn't to me :( and I didn't see discussion about it in roaming deal posts

  • QFFlyer on 15/03/2023 - 21:50

    Yes, but this is beneficial in some circumstances, such as sites which require you to physically be in Australia (or at least they need to think you're in Aus) for them to work. Nothing a VPN couldn't sort out though.

    But anyway my Optus SIM includes roaming almost everywhere I'm likely to go, but that unicorn of a plan wasn't on sale for very long, for most it'll be cheaper to get a local SIM than use your domestic carrier overseas (dual SIM works best, in case you need 2FA codes or whatever that require access to your Aussie number).

    • BigBoy47 on 17/03/2023 - 14:52

      Is this similar to your plan? Seems like it's still available despite being marked expired

  • daft009 on 20/03/2023 - 19:59

    I've usually used a local SIM however my last trip to Germany and Singapore I used my Optus roaming plan which has constant drop outs on data and even no reception on occassions… Had to reboot to get reception and then 5 min later it would drop again..grr.

    Going to Singapore next month and let's see what happens. Have swapped to esim for my local Optus service so will grab local SIM if any issues

  • petestrash on 23/03/2023 - 07:16

    I did South America with Felix in January. They promised 20mpbs but found similar speed results to the OP even in major cities. I also had a 3HK esim backup which was no better.

  • wetsandwich on 28/03/2023 - 16:51

    Agreed. I used a 'travel' sim in thailand last time, it was actually a hong kong sim with roaming. Absolute garbage! It DC'd all the time and was slow as a dying dog.

    Eventually I had to buy a local card which was proper 5g.

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