Welcome to today's episode. We're going to explore one of the most essential yet often overlooked travel tools, staying connected while traveling abroad. If you've ever wrestled with foreign SIM cards or struggled with finding Wi-Fi hotspots, only to have to then worry about the security of those hotspots, or worried about hefty roaming charges and slow data, this is the episode for you. and slow charges, this is the data, episode for We are diving you. into the world of eSIMs. Whether you are hopping from country to country or just looking for a seamless way to stay connected, we're going to share with you what we're doing to make our eSIM experiences effortless and help save money. I'm Scott. And I'm
Melissa. and we are the Sunshine
the Sunshine
Travelers. Our passion is travel and sharing our experiences with those who enjoyed as much as we do or those who want to learn more about travel or even those who just want to live vicariously through our travel stories. No matter where you fall along that journey, get ready to hear about our first-hand experiences as we visit some of the most interesting and amazing places on earth. Melissa, do you remember several
several years ago when we were traveling overseas and you had to buy a local SIM card?
I do. I think we were in the UK and we were going to be there for like three weeks. And so it was just going to work out to be cheaper and easier. But the trouble was once we got to London, like having to go find a place and buy one, taking out the old one, putting the SIM card in and then making sure I didn't lose my original one as well. And also having to have a different phone number that whole time. Right. So telling, you know, people that were close to us, hey, this is my phone number. You know, if you need to get in touch with me.
And I remember you used to have to have like a special little tool to pop that. Or I think you still do. You have to have a little tool to pop that out. And we had to somehow or another go and find a paperclip or something to pop out that physical SIM card.
Yeah, that's what I was going to say, a tool or a paperclip, but then just having to make sure because they're tiny, right? And then just having to make sure that you don't lose that original one. So it's nice that that's not the case anymore with this eSIMs. Yeah. And
which side's up, which side's down, you know, getting it to fit in there correctly and all of those things. So yeah, eSIM is definitely the way to go. And, you know, we'll talk more today about what an eSIM is, but basically you don't have to worry about those cards anymore. Apple and Google and Samsung, all those people have built in to the phones, these eSIM capabilities. So in an earlier episode, I think it was around episode 44, we talked about how we use T-Mobile for our data. And in a few places that we've traveled to, it's worked out fine. But we noticed that we would only get lower speed data, or we would go through our allotment very quickly and then they would either tack on a very expensive data pass or they would throttle you down to the point where it was worthless. Yeah. And I would say that
I would say that of all the ones that we know about, T-Mobile is probably the most affordable one at $50, I think, for a 30-day period. But I did find that it does throttle your data fairly quickly. And now they advertise, well, you don't need this because we give you all this data around the world. But they don't give you that much. And then you get very slow data. So like you were saying. You have to be on a certain data
to be on a certain data plan and they don't tell you that. They don't make that very
clear. That's true. And so we just found as much as that has worked for us in the past, this past trip, it proved to be less than convenient. And I've used
I've used Xfinity as well. Our trip to Slovakia, I was on Xfinity and I was trying to get the data package to work there and it didn't work. And I spent over an hour on the phone with support trying to get this figured
out. Yeah, I think on two different days. Yeah. And
And so, you know, it was painful because in that case, I needed it for work purposes, right? This wasn't for me to just send pictures back home and stuff like that. I needed it for work and I couldn't get the data to work on that.
Yeah. So we just wanted to come up with a different alternative for our upcoming trip.
Well, we've recently found a solution to that problem that we want to share with our listeners. We're going to talk about eSIMs and specifically a new partner of ours called GigSky. So join us as we talk to Sam King, the Chief Commercial Officer of GigSky.
Whether you're exploring new cities, relaxing on a beach, or taking a cruise, you can avoid expensive data charges or unreliable wi-fi with a gig sky e-sim easily get affordable high-speed data in over 190 countries no physical sim card required they even have cruise and land packages so you're connected both on and off the ship without having to pay for two different plans download the gig sky app activate your e-sim and you're ready to explore use code sunshine at checkout to get 10% off any data plan. Stay connected and save on your next international adventure. All right, Sam, it's so great to have you on the podcast today. And we are so anxious to learn a lot from you and get a lot of good information that we can share with our listeners. So if you will introduce yourself and then just tell us what it is that you do and the services that you provide.
Sure. Thank you, Melissa. Great to be on the show with you today. My name is Sam King. I'm responsible for sales and marketing at GigSky. And what GigSky is, is a global mobile network operator. We are like AT&T or Verizon or Vodafone, except we are much, much smaller. But we do run our own data mobile network all over the world, especially focused on helping travelers stay connected throughout their trips at the best possible quality at the lowest possible price, and also focusing on solving some unique travel-related connectivity issues, such as being able to stay connected on cruise ships in various remote parts of the world, as well as in the air.
Wow, that's going to be interesting because you hit all the topics that our listeners are going to be interested in. And I think especially on the cruise portion and then the international, I didn't know about the air. I think that's something new you just threw in on us. So can't wait to dig into that one as well. Yeah, absolutely.
So I guess explain a little bit about because you mentioned lots of cell phone companies. OK, and so people still have their cell phone that they use at home and they still may use those companies. So then how does GigSky play into that?
Sure. So GigSky's legacy was as a travel SIM company. So especially going back about 20 years, people used to carry all these SIM cards and Ziploc baggies and frequent travelers would do this because they wanted to save on data roaming fees from their home operator. This was especially prevalent in Europe before the European Union brought in the roam-like home legislation, which basically took away international roaming within the European Union. So GigSky got started in that business back in 2014, but was an early proponent and adopter of eSIM technology. So eSIM technology was the evolution of removable SIM cards, which you would get from your mobile operator and pop them in your phone. And that's what enables you to connect to the mobile network. eSIM, what that does is that enables you to download the digital version of the SIM cards onto your phone. And so GigSky worked with Apple back in 2014 on the Apple SIM, which was a SIM that was proprietary to Apple, but that enabled you to get for your iPad, AT&T, T-Mobile, but also us. So you could stay connected in any country all over the world. And then we worked with Apple to help standardize the embedded SIMs in phones. And that launched back in 2018 and now is all across the iOS ecosystem in terms of devices. And most Android devices now also have eSIMs. Sam, just to break
to break it down even more basic, is the SIM is what allows you to connect to the network, right?
That's right. You can think of the SIM as like a key that enables you to authenticate your device to authenticate to the network. It has some credentials that are specific to you and specific to the mobile operator. And basically lets the operator know that, like, hey, you're you're this you have this SIM. Your account is in good standing and you're able to use the mobile network.
And I think that you have probably piqued a lot of people's interest by talking about cruise data because people spend a lot of money on that. But why when you're traveling internationally, so why not just use, let's say you have a Verizon or a T-Mobile or some other provider, why not just use their international plan when you're traveling?
Sure. So a couple of reasons. first and foremost is cost and then also quality of experience. So just taking a step back, when Apple launched its first eSIM phone in 2018, it's also important to know that that phone was also a dual SIM phone. So dual SIM phones are phones that have two SIM slots that enable the user to use two separate networks at the same time. So you can imagine that what this was used for was to kind of break the bundle of talk, text, and data, where you could have talk and text tied to your phone number on one SIM, and then you can be running the data network on a second SIM. And that's where a gigs guy comes in. So when people buy plans from us and they download our SIM card, we're able to use that second SIM slot because we're only providing data. We're a data-only mobile operator. But at the end of the day, data is really what people want and need, especially when they're traveling. So we have this setup on iOS and Android where you can keep your phone number so that you can receive a text that doesn't, receiving an SMS doesn't trigger any roaming charges. That way you can still use it for two factor authentication, like with your bank or something like that. But you can, you can then use data, which means you can use the maps, you can be on Instagram and social, but you can also send iMessage, you know, the blue part or WhatsApp and most of the world is messaging this way. Traditional SMS, I think, is really just now more for two-factor authentication and stuff like that. And you can still use that when you're using our solution, along with your home provider, which provides the phone number for the talk and text. So that's just want to make sure we sort of level set on the technology for us, for roaming, just to give you an
to give you an example, if you were to take a trip to Europe and you were looking at maybe a 10 day trip, AT&T, I think charges $12 a day now for international roaming in their day pass model. So 10 days at $12, it's $120 extra on top of your AT&T bill that you would spend. With us, you could probably get through your 10-day trip with five gigabytes, assuming that you're doing a relatively reasonable amount of data consumption. And that's going to come in at $19.99. So you can spend $120 extra on AT&T, or you could spend $20 with us and then save that extra $100 and go out to a nice dinner. So I think you mentioned
you mentioned something that I didn't know about the fact that we still would have our same phone number, still would be able to use text messaging, things like that, the way that we always have. It's just now you're replacing that data component. And so I remember going back early days of when you would travel and you would buy a SIM card in the location, a local SIM, it changed everything. It changed your phone number. It changed everything. So thinking through this, I was kind of like, hmm, I'm not sure about the eSIM thing because how are people going to get a hold of me? I've got to now tell everybody my new phone number and stuff like that. So this is very interesting.
Yeah. like that. So this is very interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, certainly there are some things that you should avoid when you're using a data eSIM with travel. Like don't make a phone call, like a traditional phone call. Don't take a phone call and don't send a text message. Those will trip, you know, international data roaming tripwires. There is a hack you can do if your mobile operator offers Wi-Fi calling, like AT&T offers Wi-Fi calling. So I told AT&T, I said, I don't want any international data roaming to be possible on my account. I want you to disable international data roaming on my account. So when I travel internationally, my AT&T SIM does not work. But if I leave it on and I use GigSky, because there's Wi-Fi calling, it treats the GigSky connection like a Wi-Fi connection. So I can still actually make and receive phone calls
normally because I've disabled data roaming at the source. This only works if you have Wi-Fi calling set up from your home operator, but something that your listeners might be interested in checking
out. Yeah, I've seen that setting on my phone where I can disable data roaming. Yeah. If
I disable data roaming, then that
data roaming, then that will force it to get... You actually
get... You actually need to call in and make sure you disable it at
get... You
the source from the mobile operator. You don't want to get any signal. You don't want to have the chance of using AT&T. Then you can use us. We'll provide the data connection, but as long as you keep your SIM on, it thinks that Wi-Fi, it treats the same mechanism that's used for Wi-Fi calling is used for cellular calling over another SIM. So it's a little bit of a hack. It's an advanced use of GigSky. But your listeners don't have to do that necessarily. They can just, you
to do that
know, keep everything normal. Just don't opt into the AT&T, you know, day pass plan. Buy from us. Keep their home SIM on so they can receive those SMSs if they need to for two-factor authentication. But then just make sure that when they're communicating with people that it's on iMessenger, WhatsApp, FaceTime audio, FaceTime. There's so many different ways to call some folks now. You'll probably find a way and be okay.
Okay. That's a great point. And I wanted to back up because some people might be like, oh, well, it's only $120. But that's for one person, right? So then we've got me and Scott. So now we're looking at 240. You have a family with three kids. Now you're looking at a ton of money. And then the kids accidentally take calls and they do all this stuff or aren't using it right. And now you're looking at... You're looking at a grant. It could easily be a grant for a family of four with a mistake. So tell us a little bit about how GigSky is
then we've
then the
easily be a grant for a family of four with a mistake. So
tell us a little bit about how GigSky is different from other eSIM providers. Because there are other providers out there. And so how do you guys differ?
The biggest difference between us and everybody else in the industry is that we are actually a mobile network. We make our own SIM cards digitally, but we make our own SIM cards. We have our own telecommunications core where we store the subscriber information. And that means that we control what networks our users are using at any given time and can move our users to the networks that are performing best, as well as have live 24-7, 365 customer service that can, one, respond. Many of our competitors don't even respond or attempt customer service. And two, can actually do something about the problem. You see, most of our competitors, if not all of them, they buy eSIMs from big mobile operators, and then they just turn around and sell them. This is the digital equivalent of buying a SIM card from a guy or a gal in a dark alley. You don't know what you're going to get. You don't know if it's going to work. You don't know where the SIM has come from. You don't even know where it's from. And then you buy it and you just kind of hope that it works. And they can't help you if there's a problem. Just like if you were to buy a SIM card on the street, a physical SIM card on the street, that person is not going to be able to help you. You'd have to get in touch with the mobile operator that sold that person the SIM. And in a lot of cases, unless you're kind of savvy and you know what to look for, you don't even know the origin of the SIM because they'll rebrand it and you'd have to like go and dig into the settings and translate some SIM IDs back into where the mobile, where that SIM came from. You know, I'll give you an example. One of our, you know, competitors was saying that, you know, they were really pushing a made-in-the-USA message about their technology, and they were selling an eSIM from China Mobile. It's a completely unregulated industry for the most part, so it's kind of buyer beware. We encourage everybody who's doing eSIM to do their homework about the company that they're using, where their data is going. Remember, if you buy an eSIM, you know, it's going through some mobile operator's network and you don't necessarily know which one or where in the world that is. You know, I would add that, you know, GigSky, we take, you know, our privacy and our subscriber security very, very seriously. our privacy and our subscriber security very We're GDPR compliant very, and we, seriously. you are trusted by know, Apple when we work with And we're also them. trusted by Visa, the credit card company. We've got a partnership with them and they did a lot of deep vetting to make sure that we were the right partner. And the fact that we're a mobile operator, as opposed to just a bunch of guys and gals reselling digital SIMs is why they chose to work with us.
And the other thing that I understand is that you download a GigSky eSIM. Well, first of all, you have an app, right? You guys have an app. You get all that set up. You download this eSIM. And that's the only time that you're going to download. That eSIM is your eSIM. And then basically you're taking that and you're topping that up. So then every time that you, like you're talking about, go into these different places, you're not getting an eSIM for Greece and then getting one for Japan and then so on and so forth. So I guess just explain a little bit about that so that people
understand. Yeah. So for the competition, when they're selling an eSIM, they're,SIM, for a particular country or region, they're going to sell an eSIM from that country or region, which usually has the best prices. So a Greek eSIM might be resold from Orange, the big French telecommunications company. The Japanese, the one for Japan, might actually be from SoftBank, a Japanese mobile operator. So now you're stuck with two eSIMs and you're having to manage this and it can get kind of messy on your phone and you can actually clog up your eSIM storage on your phone and then you have to delete them. And there are all kinds of customer experience issues and nobody can help you because nobody has any money. Even if you're buying from one provider, they're not really keeping track of like which eSIMs are wearing because they're always changing their eSIM partners. So it can be it can get to be a mess real fast. So for us, it's because we make the eSIM. It's just one eSIM. You can download it and hold on to it for the for the life of, you know, your device. And of if you change you can download it and hold on to it for the life of your And then of course, then, course, devices, device. if you change devices, you can download another one. But we manage everything with our roaming relationships from the SIM out. So the end user doesn't have to be burned with worrying about that. And also because we're a mobile operator, we're able to do these unique connectivity projects with partners, which is why we were able to offer maritime connectivity and why we were able to offer some in-flight connectivity as well, because we're able to do these direct roaming agreements and have control over our product. Yeah. So because we're a mobile operator, not only do you only have to have one SIM from us, but we can also control our different connectivity products, packages, etc., because we can do our own roaming agreements. We're not relying on any one operator's roaming agreements. We can do our own, which is how we were able to bring maritime cruise ship connectivity to retail, as well as in-flight connectivity to retail as well. And it's also how we're able to create these customized ship and shore, I like to call them surf and turf packages, where you're able to get connectivity in all of the different places that you're going on a cruise in one package. So just to level set, we sell country plans, regional plans. We have a world plan. And then our in-flight plan is kind of standalone. And then we have the surf and turf packages, you know, cruise in Caribbean, cruise in Europe, cruise in Asia is how that works. So, you know, if you're depending on what your travel looks like, you know, you can get a country plan from us if you're going to be one spot. Those are usually a little bit cheaper because we know exactly where you're going to be and we can price those more aggressively. The more countries you there's add, sort of more going to And be. we can price those more aggressively. The more countries you there's sort of more variability for us. add, So we usually make those a little bit more but they're expensive, pretty convenient. And often, depending on how long you're going to be in one country, it really makes sense. Our Europe plan is pretty popular because people are hitting more than one country when they go to Europe. And they're only going to be in each country for a couple of days. And then where this really is highlighted is in the cruise packages, because you think about it, you get on a cruise ship and you pay for the Wi-Fi, and then you make a port call. So if you're, I don't know, on a seven-day or 14-day Mediterranean cruise, you might make four or five stops and you're only on land for a couple of hours. But AT&T and Verizon, they don't care whether you're there for 24 hours or 24 minutes, they're still going to charge you that full $12 a day day pass. And so on a per hour basis, that starts to look real expensive, right? So, you know, what we were able to do, especially when you're combining that with the cost of the onboard Wi-Fi. So, you know, we were able to combine and offer, you know, 500 megabyte, 1 gig, 3 gig sort of combined plans where it'll work in every country where you stop on your cruise, as well as on the cruise ship itself. And, you know, and there's also, you get to take advantage of some of the inherent benefits of cellular technology because a cruise ship is not an ideal place for Wi-Fi, given how it's constructed and what they're constructed of and the cost for the cruise companies to put like the Wi-Fi repeaters all over the ship. I think it's probably very dependent. Your Wi-Fi experience for cruisers is very dependent on where your stateroom is.
That's right. Yes, we found that out recently. You are right. Yes.
And so with cellular, it's a different bearer, right? It's a different radio technology. So even though it's likely that the Wi-Fi and the cellular is getting off the ship in the same way, because it's got to go up to the satellite, how it gets from the radio to the phone or the tablet is a much different story, whether it's going through cellular or going through Wi-Fi. So we think that being able to offer cellular connectivity on the ship, as well as, and then pulling that data for the land, the value proposition is just really strong. And, you know, it can save folks a lot of money and a lot of headache when they travel. So, I
So, I mean, that sounds like if you're doing a cruise, that that is the way to go, especially if you're cruising internationally, right? Because then, like you said, you're having to get a couple of different things and that cruise data can definitely be more expensive. Now, that's a more expensive plan, but nothing to what it would cost you with the with the cruise. And then, like I said, by the time you add the international plan, for sure.
That's right. That's right. I think once you, you know, once the depending on the buy in for the cruise, you know, Wi-Fi or getting it through your, you know, some mobile operators do roam on cruise ships, but it can be very expensive. So once you kind of look at how you get connected on the ship and then being able to also avoid the day pass charges on land, you know, you're in for a pleasant surprise, especially if you have something.
Yeah. So what do you tell people if they have no idea how much data that they use and they don't even know where to start when they go start looking at those plans?
I mean, I think that, you know, there's different tools that people can use in order to try to figure out how much data they have. And we have some help, you know, FAQ articles that kind of help sort of lay that out to help people plan. But, you
know, I think generally speaking, the three to five gigabyte on LAN piece, you know, generally works pretty well for kind of a week. The five gigabyte plan is probably our most popular plan, the one and the five. The one is what people usually buy when they're doing their first purchase to try to test it out. And the five is what they do after they're comfortable. We do offer larger plans, but those are usually pretty good. The one and the three, we have a one gigabyte, three gigabyte plan for shipping shore. And that might not seem like a lot, but there's really kind of an upper limit of how much data you might be able to use on the, on the ship because, because of the capabilities of the ship itself to get the data off. So that's not anything that we can control, but the, the satellite data is just going to be a little bit slower. And that kind of acts as a, you know, we're not throttling it, but that acts as a little bit of a throttle to kind of help people, you know, manage their data consumption if they're on a
a ship. I think Melissa was actually asking because she wanted to know if you had a 100 gig per day package for herself.
We do have unlimited packages. So we do have some unlimited packages, not for cruising, but we do have unlimited packages on land. We have a seven-day and a 15-day unlimited package. And that helps people who really want to have not worry about topping up or running out of data. They can buy the unlimited package and just be good to go.
go. So all of our influencer friends that are on their phones a lot and it's part of their livelihood, that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. And I want to get into some of
And I want to get into some of the how-tos because I think people are like, well, I wouldn't even know where to start and how to do this. But a couple of things real quick off that discussion is that if you don't have enough, then it's just easy to go on that app and then just get, you know, get a little bit more or whatever. That's
That's right. And, and, you know, yet another benefit of us being a mobile operator is that we operate what we call the captive portal, which means even if you have no data left on your plan, you can still top up. You're still connected to Even us. if there's, even if there's no you data, can still top You're up. still connected to us. Even if there's no data, you're not bricked. You got to buy more to keep it, to turn the pipe back on. But if you get an eSIM from one of our competitors and you run out, you have to go find Wi-Fi in order to get it turned back on again.
So basically, the GigS sky app is going to work for you to be able to do that it's kind of like the delta app works exactly to that but you can't get to anything else on the internet but you can get to the delta website and stuff like that when you're flying delta for example correct well
that but
example correct well for example that's a great analogy melissa because it's it's not it's not an analogy it. It's the same technical underlying process. Yes. So you're able to shop and look at prices and all that, even if you have a zero balance on your account.
Okay. So let's go back and then walk somebody through. I'm going to get started with
this. Where do I even start? step is to, you know, download the, the gig sky app from the app store on, on iOS or Android. And, you know, part of, part of doing that. And once you get the app on and you, and you go in to set up your account, if you happen to have a locked device, then, you know, we call that out very early in the, in the process and be like, Hey, look, you must have an unlocked phone in order for our app to work. Just a moment on the locked phones piece for the US listeners. This used to be a pretty big deal in the US. It has become less of a big deal as more people have purchased their phones directly from Apple or directly from Samsung or, you know, over the, over the internet or Best Buy or Costco or wherever. And also, you know, various mobile operators, you know, or I believe Verizon's unlocking automatically after 60 days. So not as many people are on the sort of device upgrade plans and have, have locked phones. But, you know, if you're, if But if you're not sure, you can ask your mobile operator or our app will tell you. We're not going to have you go through the whole buy flow and then figure out that your phone is locked. We'll tell you right up front whether or not it's going to work. And then you can make the decision whether you want to unlock your phone so that you can use our service or be stuck with the $12 a day. But as you pointed out earlier, you add up enough people. And if your trip's long enough, your savings on one roaming bill is almost enough by getting the phone unlocked. You take a couple trips a year, then it really starts to make sense to have an unlocked phone. So that's how you get started. And then you set up an account with us. We have a Visa tile through our Visa partnership. If you are a Visa credit card holder and you have a signature card, you can type in your card number and we'll validate your signature status and give you a 20% discount. Do the same thing if you've got an infinite credit card and you can get a 30% discount. So those are some pretty good offerings. And the U.S. Bank and cardholders with the specific Altitude Connect card actually get a complimentary plan. So that's a special benefit for them.
And if none of those apply to you, you can use the code sunshine and get 10% off. And so that is for our listeners. Yeah, that's
right. So then from there, you there, it's pretty straightforward. You go in and we ask where you're traveling. And you just put in the country. And then you'll see the country plan. If there's a country plan for that country, regional plans that include that country or the world plan, if it includes that country. That's how our app is structured. And then you see the different data packages that are offered, you know, like a one gigabyte, three, five, 10, unlimited seven day, unlimited 15 day. And then for the cruises, there's a special, you can get to the cruise plans either way. You can type in a country that might be included in our cruise plans, or you can look at cruise plans first, and you can see the different options. You should always double-check with the cruise plans to make sure that your ship is listed. So we've listed all the ships that we're available on. It's pretty much all of them, but you should still check because it's pretty much not all of them. So just double-check. But all the big ones, all the Disney, Carnival, Viking, Norwegian, it's pretty much not all of them. you So, know, just double check, but all the big ones, all the like Disney carnival, you know, Viking, Norwegian, it's all there. And yeah, you know, it's pretty straightforward. If you've already gotten an eSIM from us with the, with, you know, through the free plan, then you don't need to worry about downloading the eSIM again. It will, it will be there ready for you. Just a point on the eSIM download, that part, the app will sort of talk you through with the instructions the first time you download it. If you don't need it right away, then the app explains how to go back into your cellular settings. So into the settings menu, cellular, and then how to set up and configure your device for when you are ready to travel and use it. Usually I do this, I get everything bought and ready to go the morning of or the night before. And then in the air, as we're getting ready to land, I sort of get my eSIM ready through the settings so that I can hit the ground running. And we have a ton of articles and tutorials and stuff to help people with that. And should there be any questions, your listeners can always reach out to us. We have in-app chat. We have email support. And we even have a good old-fashioned phone number to call where you can talk to a live person who will talk you through setting up your eSIM if you really just need an extra bit of assistance.
That's awesome because that's pretty rare these days. So that's awesome.
And if it's helpful, my 77-year-old aunt was able to do this on her own.
All right. Yeah, it's really the first time it can be a little bit intimidating. I don't know if intimidating is the right word. It's a little complicated. I mean, I think Apple has done, and Google have done a good job of trying to keep this as simple as possible. But like I said, we don't have kind of the market history of dual SIM phones in the US. So this is just like a different kind of concept. But once you see it, once you've done it once, then it's pretty easy. It's about a five minute investment into figuring it out the first time. And like I said, we're here to help every step of the way. Well, that's not
not bad. Yeah, five minutes. That's not
bad. So country-wise, are you guys in most all countries?
Most all countries that you would want to visit. Yes. So we offer connectivity everywhere. North Korea is not an option. And I believe for cost Mauritania reasons, is off the table.
But every other country is including available, for folks that Cuba, I don't know. are, Americans still might find that a bit challenging. But we have a lot of European and Canadian customers that like to check cuba out not only like what countries are available it's it's available to anybody that's right like
check cuba out not only like what countries are available it's it's available to anybody that's
like as long
long as you can use that app and get on there and put in your credit card and do all that stuff you can use it yes it is available to everybody as long as there are no like u.s treasury requirements to to not sell
can use it yes it is available to everybody as long as there are no like u.s treasury requirements to to not sell them. So I think all your listeners are probably good. All right. But there are a couple of countries where we've had to wall off because payment doesn't work anymore with them.
Okay. Okay. But good to know. Yeah. Like you said, most people it's going to apply to. So Sam, we have a question for a future trip for ours. In a few weeks, we're leaving to go to Africa, but it will include Egypt for a few days and then in a few we're weeks, leaving to go to but Africa, it will include Egypt for a few days and then Kenya and then South Africa. So should we do, is there an Africa region plan that will include all those or should we do the individual country? So there is
is an Africa regional plan and the Africa regional plan does include all three of those countries. So depending on how long you're staying in each country, that kind of determines whether or not you should do a, you know, in my opinion, whether you should do the country plans or you should do a regional plan. So I kind of say if you're going to be in a country maybe like over a week, then they maybe do like a country plan. But if it's going to be like less than a week, you're probably better off just buying the regional plan and pulling the, pulling the data altogether, depending on your own kind of like data consumption. There's a rule of thumb. My week week is for like a week is sort of like my, my cutoff point between like a country plan and a regional plan okay yeah two of
of the countries will be there like four to five days and then one of them will be there like 12 days okay
yeah you can kind of look at the the different you know country plan prices by country for that 12 day one but you may you may just want to like, you know, it's about a, you know, between a, a, like a 10 gigabyte Egypt plan and a 10 gigabyte Africa plan. The difference is $16. So, you know, from 44 to 60. So maybe you just, you know, just to not have to mess with it, you know, you get that regional plan and you're, you're on your way.
Good to know. So here, here's another thing I wanted to bring up. So you would kind of have some tips, I guess, for people like when to use this, but then when to hop on the hotel's Wi-Fi, the same as you would for if you bought it through a phone provider, correct?
Yes. So hotel Wi-Fi is a very, very tricky thing, depending on where you go. So, you know, generally, we kind of recommend people to stay off of hotel Wi-Fi where they can, because there's a lot of stuff. And at the very least, you should use a VPN if you're on the hotel Wi-Fi. And look, it's not just because I'm trying to sell, you know, cellular connectivity.
And it's not just because I'm trying to sell cellular look, but especially in certain there connectivity, can be a lot of bad actors that are messing countries, around with the hotel even in American branded hotels. Wi-Fi, Because it might be a but it's locally owned Marriott, and run. Right. So you just got to be very, very careful. I mean, you know, I think that like, you know, just sort of, you know, understand what you're dealing with and that Germany is going to be different than, you know, someplace else. Right. So buyer beware with the hotel Wi-Fi. You can Google. There's plenty of horror stories out there of people who've gotten bad things happen to them through the hotel Wi-Fi.
Yeah, it brings up, we've been talking about that we need to do an episode or something on security when traveling. And so I think we'll probably follow up
with that. So then making sure if you want to avoid that completely, making sure then you get enough data on your GigSky plan to cover. making sure then you get enough data on your GigSky plan to
making sure then you get enough data on your GigSky plan to cover. Yeah. And to that point, we're okay with tethering your device on our SIMs, no problem. Like some of our competitors don't allow it at all or only allow it a little bit or whatever. We don't care. So as long as you've got data on the plan, then you can tether as many devices to it as you like. And that's probably the most secure way for you to travel is to tether your device to GigSky, have us take care of your data, getting it out to the internet, as opposed to, you know, running it through the hotel Wi-Fi in Egypt, Kenya, and South Africa. I mean, you just never know who's listening. And, you know, the fact is that for a lot of reasons, the hotel Wi-Fi, depending on the clientele of the hotel, you know, everybody from criminals to the security services of the country that you're visiting, you know, maybe tapping into the hotel Wi-Fi. So like, you know, beware. That's a really good point. Yeah, that is a good point.
a really good point.
Yeah, that is a
good point.
Because most people just think, and I guess going back to the initial then, well, I don't need to get an international plan at all. I'll just use the hotel Wi-Fi. Yeah. And so now you've given us a whole nother reason, say, OK, not to pay the expensive on yours and then not just rely on the hotel Wi-Fi that. Yeah, this is a good option.
Yeah. And it's sort of this thing that is like, you know, if you were if you were a diplomat and you worked for the State Department, would you use the hotel Wi-Fi for work?
No, I'm not very trusting at all anyway. I think it's a great topic for a future
it's a great topic for a future segment. If you'd like, we'd be happy to participate in that. We can do some research and prepare some stuff as well.
In just circling back on the fact that we're a mobile some folks on your show might have been affected by or know someone who was affected by the massive AT&T outage that happened back in where the whole network went dark for several And we were able to you a couple of We were able to move you know, addition, operator, February, hours. do, know, things. our, inbound to the U.S. roaming users from AT&T onto a different network so that they could stay connected. So, you know, there are a few heartbeats where that went by, you know, as we sort of diagnosed the problem, but then made the moves and then they were back up and running again. And everything was, everything was everything was fine for them and we also sold a fair number of u.s plans to u.s people that day because you know we were able to help keep people connected and and that gets back to our ability as a mobile operator to select the combination of visited networks that we that we use and and open up for our subscribers. So we have this long list. Every country's got three to four mobile operators usually. And based on the quality of service, we're able to pick and choose and open and close different networks depending on how they're performing. And we do everything that we can to keep people connected because we don't just run this consumer business. We also have an enterprise business where we've got some mission-critical connectivity requirements and clients who rely on us to keep operations moving, especially in the aviation and logistics space. And you don't want to leave a plane full of packages stranded on the runway because their pilots can't get connectivity. And airports are very challenging places to provide connectivity. And so we've really kind of honed our network switching and quality of service on the airport problem, like the D9 at Heathrow problem. And then we've been able to translate that back into the consumer business to make sure everybody is staying happy and connected when they're on vacation or traveling for work.
Well, excellent. Well, one of the things we like to do, Sam, is with all of our guests, is we have three different questions that we ask. The first one is, what is your favorite place that you've ever visited? My favorite place that I've
place that I've ever visited. So this is Tbilisi, Georgia. So I've had the opportunity to go to Tbilisi a number of times. Is that outside of Augusta?
of Augusta?
It is right outside of Augusta it is right outside of right outside of augusta and you know as your listeners may know or may not know i'm based in atlanta georgia and so i always get a couple of strange looks it takes you know usually three tries to check in at delta when i'm flying to tbilisi you know where's that is that near newton yeah, so Tbilisi and the Republic of Georgia and the Southern Caucasus. Georgia is a is a lovely country. It's a fascinating country. It is still, you know, getting accustomed to tourism from from the West. You know, it's the people are really fantastic. The food is amazing. There's no food like Georgian food because it's sort of at the crossroads of Europe and Asia right there on the Black Sea. They claim, the French may disagree, but they claim to have invented winemaking. So there's an excellent like viniculture scene, wine scene there, food scene there.
wine scene there, food scene there. And, you know, sort of like the, you know, I remember going to Prague back in the 90s and it was like Prague was still sort of undiscovered, but now Prague is completely discovered, right? And so, you know, you sort of keep trying to move east to find places that still have an era of, or an aura of authenticity. And so Tbilisi for me really, and Georgia really, really meet that mark. And I'd encourage folks to check it out if they want to get off the beaten path and have a real sort of deep travel experience. That's
awesome. So it's always interesting. So you are the first person who obviously has mentioned that, but it's always, we always joke that every time we do an interview, our bucket list just grows and grows and grows. You definitely make us want to add that to the list.
grows.
So while we're on the topic of bucket list, what's still on your bucket list of places to travel? Yeah. So, you
So, you know, my experience in Georgia has kind of gotten me into this kind of Silk Road in reverse, kind of gotten me into this kind of Silk Road in reverse, trying to, you know, go into some places in Central Asia as you sort of move the middle corridor as you move east. So like Tashkent, Samarkand, you know, these places that are pretty remote, but, you know, have long, long histories as part of the, you know, the land-based trade routes between Asia and Europe. You know, Georgia is kind of like the last stop of Europe before you, you know, get into that. So I kind of like to continue that journey east until I run into the water eventually. So I run into the water eventually.
So I don't know if I want to keep talking to Sam or because like now he's into all these places not, I've never even heard of. And am I going to be wanting to put those onto our list of places to go to?
to? If you guys go to let me know. Georgia, You guys go to Georgia, let me know.
you for Because, at least a little know, while I know some folks longer, over you they can. there, know, It's a little country. There's only like 3 million people. We'll see if we can get you with the Minister of Tourism and get you all the stuff if you go over there. They're really trying to promote tourism. It's a little bit of a tough time because the current government is sort of kind of doing the we don't know about Russia thing. But the people themselves are like super pro-American, pro-West, like 80% of the country wants to be in the EU. Like they're, they're great. So. Well, that would just be awesome for us
just be awesome for us because as we talked about, you know, Sam, you said you're from Atlanta. Our listeners probably know we're, you know, from Atlanta, growing up in Georgia. So the same thing, how neat that would be, right? To just kind of make that connection and, and, you know, and get to visit a place that, like you said, is just still a hidden gem, I would say.
Yeah, definitely still, still a hidden gem. So. All right. So we have one final question for you is where are you traveling to next?
So we're going to travel to the Cayman Islands next. I grew up in California. So the, the Caribbean always seemed very, very far away. But we actually realized my wife went to the Cayman Islands with a girlfriend. And it's really close, actually. You know, it's like an hour and 45 minute flight from Atlanta. And you know, the hotels are 15 minutes from the airport. And it seems to be very turnkey we have two small children so being able to like you know get on the plane and four hours later be in your hotel room but be to be away is is really enticing and so that's where we're going to be traveling next year in the fall
so we'll tell you that the taxis are very expensive so be prepared for that. But you should also go to the, what was it, the Cayman's Island Distillery. Really neat. They distill rum, but they have their particular rum, they age it under the ocean. Oh, okay. So it's a neat little tour to do.
Yeah, great place with kids, though. Great beaches. Well, not necessarily the
necessarily the distillery.
No, no, no. I'm sorry. The Cayman Islands. Yeah, just great beaches. Depends on the kids.
Depends on the kids. Yeah, so my wife went with her girlfriend, and then she's like, this is pretty turnkey. Yeah, it always sounds kind of bourgeois to me to say that we're going to the Cayman Islands, but I like to juxtapose it with I just got back from Georgia. They're both great, probably two different travel experiences depending on what you're looking at.
But that's awesome. I mean, I feel like we do that a lot or try to do that a lot, right? We want to balance these places that are bucket list that lots of people go, right? With some things that are more off you know, off the beaten path or trying to find those off the beaten path things.
Well, Sam, thank you for joining our show today and sharing with our listeners about GigSky. We're going to have a lot more discussion about GigSky coming up.
Awesome. Well, hey, Scott, Melissa, it was a pleasure. Yeah, if you guys are ever in Atlanta, please let me know. And looking forward to connecting with you guys soon.
So what I really like about GigSky is that you install an eSIM once and then you can use their app and add data packages to that, depending on where you're traveling. So it's not that you're having to buy an eSIM, you know, when you go to Thailand and then one when you go to South Africa and then another one when you are in somewhere in Europe, for example. You download that one eSIM and then when you go to those places, you just go right to their app and you type in Thailand, South Africa, whatever, and figure out then just buy based on what you need. And so I think that makes GigSky a lot easier than some of the other ones on the market.
Plus the fact that they go ahead and connect that app to their network. And so no matter what country you land in, the app can talk to their network to purchase that data plan. You don't have to go and find Wi-Fi somewhere to get data working. You just go into the app, you choose the country you're in, you buy a data plan, and then it starts working. Yeah. And I
I will say, too, that if you need support, it's very convenient. Setting mine up, I did not follow the instructions step by step, and which they're super easy to do. And I just didn't and haven't given and like immediately got to chat with somebody and they immediately had my issue fixed and told me what to do. So I thought that was really neat. But the fact that you could chat with them, or if you don't forget to top up your plan, you know, before you get there, then you don't have to worry about that. And there's a lot of eSIM providers out
a lot of eSIM providers out there. GigSky is the one that does what we're talking about here, where you have a single eSIM that works all over the world in like 190 countries. And then you just use the app to add data plans. But the other really cool thing about that is they also have packages that work on land, sea and air. And that is pretty unique to GigSky.
Yeah. And I'm excited to try that out because when we took our last cruise, we had, you knew that you were going to need a data package to work while you were on the cruise, but then that one wasn't fast enough. And so then you had to upgrade. And so then you ended up spending, I mean, it was several hundred dollars to get that. And then, so what's cool about this is then you're not getting, you know, you're not paying a per day fee to use your phone when you're in port. And then an expensive data plan, like you get a cruise and land package. And that's super easy.
So I think I'm going to need to get Sam back on the call here because I'm just realizing that it's going to cost me more money using him because now you're saying we've got to go take a cruise so that you can test this out. So Sam, we need to talk. Well, let's talk a little bit about the cost of GigSky eSIM versus day packages from your mobile carrier, especially for all of you that are very heavy users of social media, or maybe your kids are, right? Kids that want to download or stream movies and content while you're traveling, or if you're doing video conferences for work, in some cases, you're going to want to tether other devices to your data. And GigSky allows all of that. But let's talk about if you were to go through your mobile carrier. And so my aunt is traveling with this, I have two aunts that are traveling with us on this trip that we're going on. And my Aunt Rita was going to have to pay around $12 a day through AT&T for an international data package. And if you add that up, they're there for almost 15 days. And so she would have 15 days times the $12 a day. So that comes out to a pretty hefty, you know, package that she would be using. And I believe it may have a data cap on it as well. She would have you worry about finding to, know, you in different Wi-Fi, places know, to offset those costs.
But with GigSky, you know, she can FaceTime back home with, you know, her family and not have any concerns there. She'll be safe on a cellular connection and won't have to worry about cyber attacks through Wi-Fi. And we do have an episode on cybersecurity while traveling coming up in October. October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. And so we have an episode that we're going to do for them. So come back in October to hear that episode. I'm excited for
for that because I literally thought it's okay to just use Wi-Fi. So
yeah, I got in trouble for not telling her things. But you know, with GigSky, we were able to get her an unlimited data plan for 15 days for $44.99. And then she used our discount code, Sunshine, and she saved another $4.50, which means she got the 15-day unlimited plan for around $40. So she's not worrying about how much data she's going to use during this
trip. That's crazy because that's like what, three and a half days, what it would have cost her with AT&T. That's incredible. So with T-Mobile, we used to buy a $50 30-day. I think it did like 15 gigs of data, but a lot of times it would throttle you at that 256 kilobytes per
second. But so here's the cool
cool thing. We are able to get the same thing through GigSky and it's going to work in all of Africa for us at high speed data, because if you've heard our other episodes, we're going to three different countries. So we'll be in Egypt and Kenya and South Africa. Can I
give you just kind of something to compare that to? So that 256 kbps, that's basically a DSL line. So if you think way back in technology, when they were first coming out with high speed internet, and I'm doing air quotes here, high speed internet, that was around 256 KBPS. So we would be stepping back, I don't know, eight, nine years or more.
Yeah, and that's what I found. Like a lot of times when I've used that and connected, I'm not like, I'm not on the 5G, right? It's 4 or it's 3. I mean, we've been in Ireland when it's been like 2. And so it basically just, you know, I mean, it basically renders itself very useless. So it's also important to note that you have to or you may have to upgrade your monthly plan with T-Mobile to get that international data plan for $50. As well, you do have to have a certain level with T-Mobile and that's not always really super clear. So price wise, the T-Mobile is better than Verizon or AT&T. But again, the service that we had recently just didn't didn't cut it. So on the island of Crete or just our T-Mnoble it was really unusable when we were traveling around and i relied that i ended up really relying on the wi-fi which now you're telling me is not a good thing to rely on and then that's what i ended up having to use so yeah so on the t-mobile plans
the t-mobile plans thing we bought our phones outright from t-mobile so we don't we're not financing it through t-Mobile anymore. So we don't have to be on one of those, you know, upgrade every year, upgrade every two year plans. And so we were able to drop our package down to still get unlimited, you know, talk text data through T-Mobile. But now we're not paying them that extra bit to finance the phones, which are those upgraded packages, right? But they tie the international data into those upgraded packages to encourage you to do that. So if you haven't heard this
haven't heard this story, there's a couple from Dunedin, Florida that use nine and a half gigs of data on T-Mobile when they traveled to Switzerland. It was a husband and a wife, and they were sharing pictures and videos of the beautiful sights when traveling. And then when they got home, they got their bill from T-Mobile after returning, and they originally thought it said $143. And then they looked at it more closely. T-Mobile was charging them $143,000. And this story actually like made the national news. And I thought what was funny
what was funny is T-Mobile's response here is we recommend our customers to check the travel features of their plan, such as international data roaming before departing. And in this particular case, if you go out and read the news article, the person actually went to their T-Mobile store before traveling. It never was this mentioned. So T-Mobile goes on to say, if a customer is on an older plan that doesn't include international roaming for data and calling, they need to make sure they're using airplane mode and Wi-Fi when using data to be certain that the device doesn't connect to an international network.
So that's crazy because then it basically like negates the $50 plan. So it's very confusing. And that's what I found with them. It's just very confusing about, you know, what's included and stuff like that. And one thing that when I went to set up the eSIM with GigSky is that it walks you through step by step and tells you, you know, this is the settings that you need to be. You, you know, you turn it on to where your data doesn't switch back to your, you know, your home network. And so they just make it super easy. The other thing about GigSky is that they also have a free plan that you can download on your phone and test it out before you make any type of purchase. Now, there isn't a free plan in every single country. But like, for example, if you are US based, you can do a free plan in the US to go ahead and like download your eSIM and just, you know, get all the settings set up and then test it I think it was like out. 100 megabytes or something like but enough you that, get all the settings know, set up and then test it out. I think it was like 100 megabytes or something like that, but enough for you to at least get it set up. So I thought that was that was really cool. And then the other thing that we want to make sure we mentioned it
other thing that we want to make sure we mentioned it earlier, but we just want to make sure that you remember is to use the discount code sunshine at checkout. And that's going to give you a 10% discount off the cost. And so if we go back up to my Aunt Rita, right, it's going to cost her around $45. She applied the code and then she ends up getting 15 days of unlimited data for around 40 bucks.
Yeah. And then the other good thing is if you think, okay, I might use, you know, five gigs, 10 gigs, whatever. And if you end up using more than that, you can just go top up that eSIM. I mean, it really is as simple as that. I mean, obviously, you know, it's like anything that you buy in bulk. It's cheaper if you buy more from the get go. But just to be on the safe side, you can just always go top that up, which is really cool. Well, we hope that you're feeling
feeling more confident and ready to explore the world without worrying about your cell phone bill. And whether you're navigating new cities or staying in touch with loved ones back home, an eSIM can be your travel companion. GeekSky is our partner of choice for eSIM, and the biggest convincing factor is that they have their own network. They aren't just resellers of eSIMs. Have you ever used an eSIM while traveling? Let us know how it worked out for you. Email me at scott at sunshinetravelers.com and tell me about your experience. We are always encouraged by your travel stories. We hope you enjoyed this episode and found some inspiration to help you with your travel journeys. If you could take a moment to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform, it would be greatly appreciated. Your five-star reviews help us get discovered by others and possibly featured on your favorite platform. Don't forget to follow or subscribe to our podcast to get notified of new episodes as they are released. You can also find us on Instagram and Facebook at Sunshine Travelers Podcast. Remember, that is Travelers with one L. Most importantly, please share it with your friends to help them catch the travel bug. You never know, they may become your greatest travel companion.
