Orbislo Passport
One eSIM. Installed once. Valid for life.
Everyone else in this category sells you a disposable. A ticket for one country, for one block of days, written to your phone as its own profile, dead the moment the trip ends. We think that is the wrong shape for the product, and this page explains exactly why and exactly how ours works instead.
What the Passport actually is
An eSIM profile is a set of credentials written to the small reprogrammable chip inside your phone. Those credentials tell networks who you are and who pays for you. The interesting part, and the part almost nobody explains, is that a profile does not have to be single use. The GSMA specification that governs eSIM profiles allows an operator to update a live profile over the air, which means the network list, the roaming preferences and the operator policy inside it can all change without you touching anything.
The Orbislo Passport is one permanent multi network profile built on exactly that. It holds roaming agreements with multiple operators in each of our 145 live destinations, 200 plus at launch. When we add a country, or add a second network in a country you already travel to, we push an update to the profile you already have. The file on your phone gets better while you sleep. You do not download anything, you do not reinstall, and you do not need to be told.
Because the profile is permanent, your balance can be permanent too. Data is credited to your account, not welded to a specific profile with a specific expiry. That is why the Passport and the wallet only make sense together, and why providers built on disposable profiles cannot offer a wallet even if they wanted to. Their data has to expire because the thing holding it expires.
The disposable model, and what it costs you
Here is the sequence a traveller goes through with a per trip provider. You pick a country. You pick a data amount and a validity window, 7 days or 15 or 30. You pay. You get a QR code by email. You install a new profile. You use some of the data. The window closes and whatever is left is deleted. The profile stays on your phone as a dead entry with a name like Travel 7GB EU that you will not recognise in eight months. Then you do the whole thing again for the next trip.
Every one of those steps is a chance to fail at the worst possible moment, which is standing at an airport exit in a country where you do not speak the language. The email did not arrive. The QR code needs a second screen and you only have the one phone. The install needs wifi and the airport wifi wants an SMS code you cannot receive. The window started on purchase rather than on first use, so two of your seven days are already gone. None of these are hypothetical, they are the top five categories in every eSIM support queue in the industry.
The stored profile limit nobody warns you about
This is the part that turns an annoyance into a wall. Your phone can only store a finite number of eSIM profiles. On most recent iPhones that is 8 to 10 stored profiles with 2 active at a time. An iPhone XS or XR holds fewer. Android varies by manufacturer and is often lower, and some devices cap at 4 or 5. Nobody tells you the number, because until you hit it there is nothing to tell.
Buy a fresh eSIM for every trip and you hit that ceiling. Three weekends in Europe, a fortnight in Japan, a work trip to the United States, a wedding in Morocco and a stopover in Dubai is six profiles in a year, and none of them clean themselves up. When the phone finally refuses the seventh install, it does it at the moment you are trying to install it, which is usually on landing. Now you are standing in a terminal deleting profiles you cannot identify, hoping none of them is the one you still need, with no data to look any of it up.
Side by side
| Orbislo Passport | Per trip eSIM, everyone else | |
|---|---|---|
| Installs over 5 trips | 1 | 5 |
| Profiles left on your phone | 1 | 5, all but one dead |
| QR codes to keep track of | 0 | 5 |
| Setup on trip 2 and after | Nothing to do | Buy, wait for email, install |
| Networks per country | Several, switched automatically | Usually 1, fixed |
| Leftover data | Stays in your wallet | Deleted at expiry |
| New country added | Pushed to your existing profile | New product, new install |
| Hits the phone profile limit | No | Yes, eventually |
1
Installs, for the life of the account
41s
Median time for that one install
145
Destinations live, 200 plus at launch
8 to 10
Profiles a recent iPhone can store in total
What happens on your second trip
You get on a plane. You land. Your phone comes out of airplane mode and the Passport attaches to a local network, usually inside 20 to 45 seconds. If you have balance in your wallet it starts using it. If you do not, your 100 MB of monthly rescue data covers you long enough to buy some. You did not open the app before you flew. You did not think about it at all. That is the product.
If you want to think about it, you can. Open the app before you go and you will see which networks we hold in that country, the speeds real travellers measured there with the sample count, and what your trip is likely to cost. Check any of it on the coverage pages, which publish the same numbers without asking you to install anything first.
Updated over the air
New country, new network, better roaming preference. We push it, your profile takes it, and the update is typically under 40 KB. It does not come out of your balance.
Portable between phones
The Passport belongs to your account. New handset, sign in, reinstall in about 40 seconds, and the balance, the Miles and the history follow you across.
Where we lose
Two honest limits. First, the Passport needs an eSIM capable phone, so an older handset with a physical SIM tray and nothing else cannot run it, and no software will change that. Check yours on the device list before you buy. Second, a few countries and a few carrier locked handsets refuse third party eSIM profiles entirely. Where that is true we say so on the country page rather than taking your money and refunding you afterwards, and provisioning failure is refunded automatically inside 60 seconds in any case.