Cellular Roaming Issues

Question

Cellular Roaming Issues

About 2 years ago I upgraded my iphone and gave my old 2nd generation iPhone SE to my son. I activated an eSIM on his phone and all has been going great except recently.

Last Friday he travelled to Europe with his class and I was told by ATT that all he had to do was step off the plane and make a call or text and the international plan I set up would work fine. That has not been the case. He only has a useable signal for calls/text/data when he is connected to WiFi. When I called ATT to trouble shoot they told me Cellular Roaming must be turned on, it when my son goes to do that it says “Cellular Data secondary WiFi only”.

how do I fix this for him so for the next week he doesn’t have to rely solely on WiFi?

iPhone SE, iOS 16

Posted on Apr 9, 2024 11:10 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Jeremy Dunham Author

Level 1

89 points

Apr 10, 2024 5:53 PM in response to Branta_uk

I called back to ATT and it turns out that because my new phone came with a fresh SIM card I must not have removed the old SIM from my old phone. When I gave my old phone to him originally I forgot about the old SIM and activated an eSIM.

Then when he turned on his phone in Europe (and Roaming was not already on) it recognized both my old SIM card and his eSIM, thinking it was dual SIMS it defaulted to the wrong SIM.

My 14 year old figured it out independent of me and set the eSIM to work properly, so it turned out to be a settings issue within the phone, not ATT restrictions.

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Answer 2

Branta_uk

Level 7

32,892 points

Apr 9, 2024 11:27 AM in response to Jeremy Dunham

This problem is not something within Apple's control and unlikely to be a defect in the iPhone SE. It sounds more like a limitation in the roaming permissions of the host account for the eSIM (in your case set by AT&T). In the early days of eSIM there was little or no roaming capability, and the workaround has to be making a new eSIM service with a local provider. It looks like things have improved and there are now more agreements between the networks and international usage should now be available.

You need to press the problem again with AT&T, but unfortunately I suspect your son will probably have time to make it back home before there is any useful progress.

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Cellular Roaming Issues

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