Before we left the United States, I drafted a post about how I planned to manage cell and data service overseas. It was titled, simply enough, Figuring Out Cell Phone Coverage for Full Time Travel. And it all sounded really good when I wrote it. It was well researched and well thought out. The problem was that I drafted it while sitting in an AirBnb in Washington State; I was still in the United States.

Fast forward to late January 2026, and we’ve traveled through Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. But as you may have noticed, all of those locations are still in the United States. But in mid-January, we hopped on a plane at LAX, heading for São Paulo, Brazil. And before that flight, we made a few changes to the conceptual plan.

First, it turns out that I don’t think I need any Tello data while overseas, so the $25 unlimited plan we were using while in the United States could be cut down to a $5 plan with 1GB of data that, frankly, I’m pretty sure we can’t even use overseas. But it holds our U.S. cell phone number, and remains available for WiFi calling. (You’ll get a $10 discount if you use this Tello referral link, and I’ll also get $10.)

Second, I decided to go with a fairly new plan from Holafly. (If you join through my Holafly link, you’ll get a 5% discount on your first purchase, and I’ll get a $5 referral fee.) It’s a monthly plan, purchased annually, with global coverage and unlimited data. It seemed a bit expensive when I first looked at it, but (1) they were offering a discount for a limited time for the new plan, (2) I found a referral code that got me a small discount (like the link above), and (3) I realized that my wife and I should need only one plan between us, because it provides unlimited hot spot data, which is pretty unusual for these types of plans. The bottom line was that by paying for a full year up front, and using a referral code, the plan came out to around $550 for the year, or roughly $46 per month for both of us.

This was not a perfect solution. If my wife is ever out and about without me, and cannot find reliable Wifi, she would not have data. In all honesty, I doubt she’ll be venturing out on her own any time soon – at least until she gets a lot more comfortable traveling – but we wanted to find a way to protect against that risk, and to have a backup plan in case the Holafly plan did not work. So I turned back to Airalo, which we used successfully in Ecuador in 2024.

Since Airalo was only going to be an “emergency” type plan, we figured we would not need much data. So we purchased a one-year, 20GB global data plan for my wife for $58. Understand that this 20GB is not per month; it’s 20GB for the entire year. So again, not really a plan that works day in and day out. But it added only $5 per month to our cost.

Add in the $10 per month for Tello ($5 each), and we had what looked like a fool-proof, unlimited data plan for $61 per month. Is that the cheapest solution? Not even close. But for our first year abroad, I wanted security, a “belt-and-suspenders” approach, and no real data limits. I also wanted to make sure we could both make and receive calls using our normal, U.S. phone numbers. And this was still only about 10% of the cost of just paying the Verizon $10 per day (each) that we’ve done on short international trips in the past. (And if you’re willing to live with limited data, Holafly also offers a 25GB per month plan for about $12.50 per month less. I may consider moving to that plan for 2027 if I don’t think we need unlimited data at that point.)

So, now we’re back on our flight to São Paulo, and after a long and thankfully uneventful flight, we landed. And I promptly turned on my phone and had, well, absolutely nothing. No connection at all. I didn’t panic. After all, we were still on the plane, and I’ve often had limited or no data connection on a plane. I figured I’d wait until we got into the airport and try again. So we went through immigration, collected our luggage, went through customs, walked the incredibly long walk from the international terminal to the domestic terminal, re-checked our bags, went back through security, and after taking a deep breath, I tried the phone again. And again, nothing. No connection.

Now I was a little more concerned, but it was not time to panic. We found a lounge with WiFi, checked in, and I promptly opened up my Holafly app and initiated a help chat to sort out the problem. And the lovely AI chatbot that helped me offered any number of almost unintelligible, largely unhelpful suggestions, including that I wait until I got to my final destination of Rio De Janeiro and try again. Frustrated, but needing to get to my gate anyway, that was as far as I got. But the AI-bot assured me that things would be fine in Rio.

A short flight later we landed in Rio, and I turned the phone back on. It showed I had a data connection (which was also true in the airport in Sao Paulo), but I had no internet connection. I turned my Holafly line off and back on again. I turned the Tello line on and off. I turned the whole phone off and back on again. Regardless of what I tried, I had four bars, and no service. To say I was frustrated after traveling for nearly 20 hours is an understatement. Another few minutes with a mostly unhelpful chatbot, and it simply didn’t work.

To make matters worse, now I had to get to my AirBnb, and I had been told not to trust taxis and to only use Uber. Which was a bit of a problem, since I could not use the Uber app. So it was time to implement the emergency backup plan. My wife turned on her Airalo sim, and within seconds, she was connected. It just worked, no questions asked. So she logged into Uber, ordered a car, and off we went.

A few hours later, I was in my AirBnb and fighting with the Holafly chatbot again. Oddly, I did have some data service. Every once in a while, my standard 3-4 bars turned to a 5G signal, and things worked. And it was plenty fast. But as soon as the magic “5G” appeared, it would disappear, leaving me without service again. I wondered if it was just a Rio thing, and that the data was so slow except when I had a 5G signal that it appeared to not work.

I spent five fairly frustrating days in Rio fighting with data. Fortunately, we had WiFi often, my data worked occasionally, I had downloaded the Google Maps for Rio and the Portugese dictionary to Translate so I could use them without data, And if we really needed data and I couldn’t get it to work, we turned on the Airalo plan on my wife’s phone. We managed, but it was far from ideal.

Five days later we were back on a plane to Montevideo, Uruguay, and as the plane touched down, I crossed my fingers and went out of airplane mode. And, nothing. Bars, but no data connection. By this point, I was pretty angry, and would have just given up on Holafly entirely if I hadn’t prepaid for an entire year of data. Airalo’s more expensive options suddenly seemed like a way better idea.

We again used my wife’s Airalo plan to get an Uber from the airport, and then I was back online with the annoying Holafly chatbot. But this time, something changed, and “we” managed to figure out the problem. Deep in the iPhone’s menus, I had not managed to get data roaming turned on for the Holafly esim. And that was the major problem. I got data roaming turned on, and suddenly, things just worked. Exactly like they were supposed to work. I’m not sure the expression “deep sigh of relief” begins to cover it.

Next, we had to open up the Airalo app to see if we’d blown through most of my wife’s 20GB for the year in our first week. I figured at worst, it was a $58 lession, and I’d need to buy another plan for her. But fortunately, she’d only used 1GB of the 20GB available. And now that the Holafly esim is working, hopefully she won’t need to burn through much more of it anytime soon. Time will tell.

The moral of the story: being paranoid and having a backup plan is a very good thing, especially when traveling to new countries where you don’t know anything and don’t really speak the language. I am so glad we had both an Airalo and an Holafly plan, one on each phone. And I still think the combination is going to be a good one for us long term. But in a few days, I’ll be in Argentina, and who knows what issues we may have.

Before I leave, I wanted to show you where the mystery setting was, in case anyone who reads this has the same problem. First, go to the Cellular settings on your phone. Second, choose the Sim card that has the Holafly sim (I’ve named my “Travel – Holafly” for simplicity). Finally, make sure Data Roaming is turned on. Here is what it should look like:

A simple mistake, and a simple fix – one that took me a week, three different international locations, and four “discussions” with the Holafly chatbot.

So far in Uruguay, I’ve had reliable data. I’ve been able to (mostly) make and receive phone calls on my regular U.S. number, and when calling did not work for some reason, I can call or text using WhatsApp. And when I’ve needed to get SMS text codes for authentication, they have come through just fine.

I really hope I’m not writing another one of these posts in another few days, explaining my next round of troubleshooting. If you don’t hear from me again on this subject, you can assume things are working as planned.

And finally, while I suspect it goes without saying, I am not sponsored by Tello, Holafly, or Airalo. I do get a small referral fee, and you get a small discount, if you use my referral links for Tello or Holafly, but any customer can get those same referral links, and none of these companies likely has any idea I’m writing about them – though if someone from Tello, Holafly, or Airalo happens to read this, feel free to reach out, lol.