Let’s face it, travelling internationally with your cell phone is expensive by Canadian standard. So many Canadians look for a eSIM to supplement their travel activities. Specifically a data eSIM as they want to get to their social media and email while they travel. Which is why I am testing out the PuraSIM over the next few days. In short, it promises “1 minute” activation and data in 218 locations. So, let’s see if that is true.
First I went to PuraSIM.com/en to get my eSIM. I picked North America and 1GB of data as I was only testing the eSIM. But the 1GB would last me 30 days. Thus if I were staying longer, I would have picked a higher data bucket. I then got the cost and paid nothing for the eSIM as PuraSIM provided me the eSIM for free. Then I got a couple of emails:
- An email with the invoice. That was ignored.
- An email with the QR code to install the eSIM. That was of more interest to me.
I used the second email to scan it with my phone’s camera. It started the wizard on iPhone that installed the eSIM. The website promised “1 minute” activation. It was closer to four. But I won’t hold this against them as I am guessing that this is an iPhone thing.
Curiously, I connected to Rogers Wireless with the PuraSIM:
For me this is an interesting development as I didn’t expect that.
From there, I tested the PuraSIM eSIM. First I tested the signal strength which was easy as both eSIM’s were live in the same phone. The PuraSIM won out as it got 3 bars to the 2 bars that Freedom Mobile got. I also did some tests to make sure that data worked with the PuraSIM which it did. So I decided to do something harder. I streamed BBC World Service from my car. Meaning that constant streaming combined with entering and leaving underground parking would test this eSIM to see if it was better than what Freedom Mobile offers. I literally found no difference between the two which isn’t a bad thing. And my streaming experience wasn’t any different. So I would expect that if you are used to a given carrier – Good or bad – it will be a smilar experience here.
Downsides? Not really. But I did use a SIM (a physical one to be clear) in 2023 which had a local number which was France. That came in handy when I had to make local calls. I would love to see a SIM or eSIM company do that for travellers as that makes life a bit easier. But that’s an industry problem and not a PuraSIM problem.
What I would do is to go to PuraSIM.com/en to see if your destination is covered and what the cost would be for data would be for the region that you are going to. Chances are it’s going to be cheaper than your cell phone carrier which make this eSIM a total win.