Travel eSIM marketing rarely explains its own vocabulary. These are the terms behind the cards above, in plain language.
- Host network
- The local carrier whose towers your phone actually connects to — the mast behind the signal bars. Coverage and speed follow it, so it is the first thing worth knowing about a destination.
- MNO
- Mobile network operator: a company that owns and runs radio infrastructure and holds the spectrum licence, such as Vodafone, Orange or NTT Docomo. The hosts on this page are MNOs.
- Travel eSIM brand
- The shop you buy from — an MVNO or reseller that buys capacity from MNOs and resells it in app form. It owns no towers, which is why several brands can ride the same host.
- Roaming agreement
- A commercial deal letting one carrier's customers use another's network. Travel eSIMs are built on these, which is how a single plan reaches a country its brand has no presence in.
- Multi-IMSI
- A SIM profile carrying several network identities. The eSIM picks whichever partner network is strongest locally, which is why one regional plan can hop carriers at a border.
- Local access versus roaming
- Local access registers your device as a domestic user, so traffic is not routed home and latency stays low. Roaming-style plans tunnel traffic back through the home network — fine for browsing, slower for calls.
- 5G NSA and SA
- Non-standalone 5G leans on a 4G core and covers most consumer traffic; standalone 5G uses a 5G core with lower latency but far thinner coverage. A "5G ready" badge on a plan usually means NSA.
- Typical speed band
- Our indicative floor-to-typical range for a network, compiled from provider listings. It is orientation, not measurement — the cited Opensignal and Ookla reports are the measurements.
- Coverage experience
- Opensignal's measure of how often users actually get a usable signal where they go, rather than how fast it is when they do. It is the award that predicts rural and road-trip performance best.