Seafarer SIM usage

#1

My little brother working on some big ships going around the world and I’ve started looking into the various issues around international roaming in the case where you can be away for 6 to 12 months before returning home. Many UK networks have strict limits on how much the sun can be used abroad for example 60 days in any 120 day period.

Will Zevvle have any such limits?

Based on my initial search, there are some international seafarer Sims around however not many based in the UK. Where they are based in the UK the charges can be in the hundreds of pounds per month with a block of data

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#2

Presumably Zevvle will have such limits too.

How much data are you expecting to use in a month? If you’re always “roaming” it might be worth looking into IoT-specific SIMs like Hologram or Twilio Programmable Wireless.

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#3

I suspect my brother will only be doing a little while near land. Primarily email and texts, with much of the time offline.

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#4

That doesn’t sound like much data at all to be honest. The international SIMs or IoT specific ones shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Alternatively, it might be worth hacking something together with a number available over VoIP (both Andrews & Arnold and Simwood provide “real” mobile numbers that aren’t rejected due to being VoIP so they’re usable for 2FA and such) and a stock of pay & go SIMs that you rotate every month or so when it gets disabled due to the roaming (Vodafone seems to support roaming on their Pay & Go bundles, not sure for others).

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#5

In short, no. As we’re only marking up wholesale rates (i.e., not bundling data) it’s hardly an issue.

Having said that, we can’t offer data outside of the EU – we’d have to charge £100+/GB which is ridiculous (and that’d be the cheapest). Hopefully that will change over time, but I can’t say when.

If it’s just within the EU it won’t be a problem; anywhere else and I’d recommend getting a local SIM if you need data access. If we can help with that let me know. :slight_smile:

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#6

Unfortunately at the moment it could be anywhere in the world. Current voyage is LA - Taiwan - Australia - China - LA, so pretty much anywhere but Europe. Once the training is finished things may change and he might be more European based.

Eek, no wonder there are some crazy charging schemes to get the option to roam abroad in more global locations.

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