What Makes a Great Travel eSIM? Look Beyond the Data Plan

A glance at any leading travel eSIM provider’s website reveals a common theme: almost inevitably, the number of countries covered will be proudly displayed front and center.

For public-facing brands with seconds to grab the attention of potential new customers, this is an understandable tactic. One of the first questions many travelers will have while looking for travel mobile data is whether it will work in their chosen destination.

In practice, though, coverage is just one aspect of what makes a quality embedded travel eSIM service. A recent comparative study by Ookla has quantified this customer experience, breaking down how leading providers compare across speed, reliability, and security as well as coverage, and revealing the hidden network architecture that determines true eSIM performance.

For such a relatively new technology, the report reveals the extent to which connection quality and usability can vary between brands, and the selected network providers used by each.

Here, we explore the reasons for this discrepancy and explore what brands actually need to look for when entering the travel eSIM space and delivering a robust new product.

The white-label travel eSIM landscape

2026 is the year that global brands began paying attention to the travel eSIM industry.

By 2030, this formerly niche market is expected to octuple in value, driven by soaring global adoption of eSIM technology. Much of this growth is down to increased public awareness and the integration of travel eSIM services by well-known brands, often with no prior connection to the telecoms world.

In 2023, the majority of travel eSIMs were purchased from specialist providers like BetterRoaming or Holafly – brands that exclusively sell travel data directly to end customers.

While these still command a healthy portion of the roaming industry, travel eSIMs are now common across the digital sector: supermarkets, airlines, and even traditional mobile carriers have all entered the space, adding mobile plans into their apps and websites. Today, any customer-facing brand with a digital presence can theoretically launch its own mobile service.

As with any emerging industry, companies face a decision – caught between the temptation of joining a booming market near the outset, and the risk of investing in an unfamiliar product outside their traditional suite.

While it’s clear from their proven utility and genuine value, travel eSIMs aren’t about to become the next NFTs. Nevertheless, brands have a responsibility to their customers and to themselves to ensure that they provide a well-performing service at a competitive price.

Doing so requires working with an MVNE, or Mobile Virtual Network Enabler.

MVNEs and travel eSIMs

With everyone from supermarkets to airlines entering the travel eSIM space, it’s clear that prior expertise and in-house knowledge bases are no longer prerequisites to telecommunications.

This shift is made possible by MVNEs. We’ve previously explored the spectrum of MVNEs and MVNOs in our complete guide to launching a mobile service.

In essence, MVNEs handle the technical side of running a mobile service, from negotiating roaming contracts with local operators to determining network speed and routing, while the client operates the customer-facing aspect – branding, support, payments, etc. The relationship between brand and MVNE determines how much control the client has over the performance, pricing, and coverage of the mobile service.

Beyond MVNEs, the underlying network routing also dictates the quality of the mobile service. This layer is invisible to the user, but impacts the customer experience just as much as connection speed or coverage.

The Ookla travel eSIM performance comparison

Ookla, creators of modern internet speed testing and one of the world’s leading network diagnostics companies, recently released a comparative report on the performance of leading travel eSIM providers that measured reliability, latency, and connection speed as well as coverage, taking into consideration where and how the networks of different eSIM providers are routed around the world.

The findings provide a clearer picture of the actual customer experience for each provider, at least in terms of eSIM performance. Or, as the report states, “quantify exactly what that routing architecture delivers in terms of latency, speed, and overall experience.”

The results are based on the underlying network provider used by each travel eSIM brand, and the international routing that users' data undergoes during each connection.

Both factors determine the service’s speed, reliability, and latency.

Few travel eSIM providers operate their own network. Instead, they utilize an existing network from a mobile network operator (MNO) – and it’s this that determines the eSIM’s overall performance.

The coverage myth

So, while coverage is a useful metric, it rarely tells the whole story – and alone, isn’t enough to determine the quality of a travel eSIM service.

Why does this matter for the wider mobile industry?

The travel eSIM space is still an emerging field – and like any new product, first impressions are imperative. This is especially true for short-term products, where brands are rarely afforded the luxury of regaining lost trust. Customers will switch to a rival provider as needed.

Coverage is only useful when supported by an accessible, fast, and reliable connection. This network resilience is a key factor in determining an eSIM service’s success.

More network choice means greater resilience

Why, then, are some travel eSIM services more resilient than others? The answer comes down to network choice. Specifically, more network choice means greater resilience. Unlike physical SIM cards, eSIMs can connect to multiple mobile network, and eSIMs from multi-network operators like 1GLOBAL operate on the principle of network choice. If a local signal fails, a multi-network eSIM can reconnect to another mobile carrier within the eSIM supplier’s network and continue providing service. If an eSIM provider maintains only single-network agreements in each of its countries of operation, its customers are constantly at risk of network outages. Losing signal at home can be frustrating – doing so while travelling can .

1GLOBAL maintains 600+ operator relationships worldwide, meaning a minimum of three available networks in each country. This also provides users with a continually high level of mobile access, even as they travel across countries. Alongside resilience, this consistency is key to delivering a convincing travel eSIM service: customers are unlikely to return to a provider that offers wavering levels of mobile access depending on where they’re headed.

Cross-border network resilience further allows brands to upsell regional and multi-country packages for longer trips: these provide customers with a convenient, bundled service, and travel brands with a longer-term source of revenue and digital engagement. 1GLOBAL’s 600+ operator relationships aren’t just proof of coverage, but proof of network depth within that coverage area.

Routing and latency: the hidden factors governing eSIM performance

A lightweight travel eSIM provider simply resells rebranded eSIMs from an existing MVNO. A full-stack MVNO controls considerably more of the underlying experience.

The Ookla report emphasises the importance of this distinction. The quality of a travel eSIM is determined by both the individual local network performance and the wider global network architecture, routing, and roaming agreements.

Like coverage, connection speed only tells part of the story. The latency a customer experiences can be equally influenced by both network speed and routing: the more convoluted the path, the greater the risk of increased latencies.

Typically, user data is “tunneled” from the user to the internet. For travel eSIMs, this data is often across continents and through multiple nodes, increasing the potential latency of the connection. One example found the latency of two travel eSIMs on the same local network varied by a factor of 10, depending on the routing differences of their respective network providers. Network routing is impacted by the number and location of network cores offered by the eSIM’s network provider.

A determining factor in network latency was whether the eSIM network provider was based around a single or distributed core.

• Single-core networks mean that, no matter where the user is in the world, their data will always be routed through a single location before it accesses the internet. The further the user is from this location, the higher the latency (in general). While single-core networks are cheaper and simpler to operate, they increase the risk and severity of this lag: the Ookla report reveals how an eSIM brand using a single network core in Madrid subjects its customers in Southeast Asia and Oceania to latencies nearly 30 times higher than the local average. Even when the network connection speed remains high, this routing complexity results in laggy internet and a miserable customer experience.

• Distributed-core networks, like 1GLOBAL, address this issue by routing customer traffic through one of several globally distributed cores. This reduces the chances of high latencies and provides a consistently faster customer connection across the globe. Some operators extend their networks across 1 or 2 cores; 1GLOBAL has 5.

What the customer sees

Every factor listed above feeds into the customer’s perception of the eSIM service, and crucially, the brand providing it. If a bank or airline embeds a travel eSIM API into its app, the customer sees its logo, rather than that of the network provider. Payment, booking, and eSIM usage all occur within the brand’s digital platform. Poor activation, lag, or unreliable performance all impact brand perception.

Choosing the right infrastructure partner with a proven record of reliable, consistent international roaming support is therefore essential to succeeding in a crowded travel eSIM market.

When companies are looking to dip their toes into the industry, they cannot rely on single metrics, or even current market positions, to determine which partner is best for them.

In such a fast-growing market, they need to consider the infrastructure behind it – which partners offer scalable, reliable worldwide connectivity that will serve a globally-distributed demand for travel eSIMs, is one question. Additional questions are:

1. Does the provider operate its own core network?

2. How much of the eSIM provisioning stack does it control?

3. Can activation, usage and top-ups be embedded inside the partner’s app?

4. Can the service be fully branded without sacrificing telecom-grade support?

5. Which services will continue to deliver return on investment, meeting spikes in demand and serving emerging markets?

1GLOBAL Embedded Telco is a completely branded, seamless in-app experience for the customer, backed invisibly by carrier-grade telecom infrastructure, global network relationships and eSIM expertise.

Scalability and roaming

Offering a service in 200+ destinations is not the same as ensuring the service stays continually connected in each of the countries, while simultaneously and securely distributing an ever-growing number of eSIMs to an ever-widening customer base.

This requires unmatched expertise, and a mobile network that offers multiple possible connections in every country of operation, backed by a central management system.

A distributed core that provides reasonable latency even as customer numbers and their global distribution continue to climb is one element. So is a resilient network with multiple roaming agreements in every country.

In 2024, the mobile industry body the GSMA identified a lack of public awareness as one of the largest barriers to widespread eSIM adoption. The technology is already there, and travel eSIMs are objectively more useful than SIM cards in nearly every situation. The trouble was getting the word out.

Less than two years later, spurred by milestones like the release of the eSIM-only iPhone 17, eSIMs are on track to become the world's most popular SIM format. Travel eSIM usage is rising particularly fast, outstripping regular eSIM roaming usage rates. Any brand that wants to offer a travel connectivity platform must be prepared for this demand, and ready to deliver a high-quality travel eSIM experience from the outset. In a burgeoning industry, delivering a flawless first impression is absolutely vital.

1GLOBAL has helped global brands across retail, aviation, banking and more to enter and thrive in the mobile market, even with no prior experience.

1GLOBAL’s full-stack infrastructure and network of over 600+ partner carriers provide gold-standard travel eSIM services, backed by a globally-distributed core and resilient mobile network.

Find out more about 1GLOBAL embedded telco solutions, or contact our team today.