We've been quietly running NeoSIM for 14 months and have something the industry rarely shares: real, anonymized roaming data from 14,000 trips across 87 countries.
When we cross-referenced our per-MB billing against published carrier roaming rates, the gap was bigger than even we expected. The median traveler on a major US carrier paid $47 in roaming surcharges for what costs $4.10 on NeoSIM.
Three things drive that gap. First, day-pass pricing assumes you'll use the data even when you don't — most travelers use under 200MB the day they arrive. Second, carrier 'unlimited' tiers throttle to 128 Kbps after 250MB, making them functionally unusable for navigation. Third, and most importantly, the wholesale costs carriers pay haven't moved in 5 years while retail prices have crept up 11%.
What actually changes with eSIM-first MVNOs is not just price — it's the unit. We bill per megabyte, not per day, which aligns the bill with the actual cost of carrying that traffic. The result is that low-usage trips (a single weekend) and high-usage trips (a 3-week sprint) both come out cheaper, but for different reasons.