Installing and activating an eSIM

The order matters more than the steps. Almost every eSIM problem a traveller has is the same problem: they tried to install it at the moment they needed it, which is the moment they had no internet.

At home, on wifi

Install the profile. Give it a label you will recognise later, something like the destination name rather than the default.

Leave the line switched off. An unstarted travel plan usually begins counting its validity from first connection, not from purchase, but that is a per plan rule and worth checking.

One code, one install

A travel profile is almost always single install. The QR code carries one profile, and once that profile has been downloaded onto a phone the code is spent. Scanning it a second time returns an error, not a second copy.

That makes deleting the plan a destructive act rather than a tidying one. It does not go back to the provider and it does not wait for you somewhere. A factory reset removes it the same way, quietly, along with everything else you were resetting. When you have finished with a line, switch it off instead. A line that is off costs nothing and is still there next trip if the plan has validity left.

Installing on the wrong handset burns it just as cleanly. An old phone you were about to sell, or a phone that belongs to someone else while you work out whose plan is whose: wherever the profile lands is where it stays, and it cannot be moved across afterwards. Look at the device in your hand before you scan.

On landing

Turn the travel line on. Set mobile data to it. Turn data roaming on for that line, because a travel profile technically roams even though it feels local.

Then turn data roaming off on your home line. This is the step people skip and it is the one that produces the surprise bill.

If it does not connect

Give it two or three minutes. Registering on a foreign network is not instant.

Toggle flight mode once. Then check that mobile data is assigned to the right line, which is the single most common mistake.

If there is still nothing, check whether the plan needs an APN entered manually. Most do not. Some do, and the provider will say so.