My mobile internet setup 🚐
I recently installed a GLX-3000 Spitz AX router and Peplink 42G antenna into our motorhome. This is very good setup since it can ran with 12V power and doesn’t consume much electricity.
Sharing a hotspot connection from iPhone works too but the Peplink 42G has much better reception (since it’s 4x4 MIMO antenna array is bigger and it’s not used inside the metal body of my car).
The mandatory EU-data is typically not enough 🇪🇺 📉
We work and travel in our camper and consume roughly 70Gb of internet for video conferencing, streaming and gaming per month. In EU all of the service providers are mandated to have some “EU-data” which means one can use their own subscription easily for a short trip but if you extend your period for the full month you typically run out of data at some point.
Challenge of finding local SIM-cards
Our router supports 2 physical sim cards and the cheapest data plans can typically be found in local kiosks and supermarkets. This is often a fun challenge to have when visiting new countries inside EU but can be quite time consuming.
Rise of eSIM cards
Nowadays it’s very easy to just check “local sim card Estonia” 🇪🇪 to find out that eg super.ee is very popular and cheap local provider and that they even offer eSIM cards online. It’s very convenient to just purchase the eSIM QR-code and start using it immediately without even visiting a shop. The only problem is that routers don’t typically support eSIM cards and that typically the eSIM card QR-code can only be activated once and in one device.
Physical eSIM card support with Eiotclub SIM
So in order to use cheaper local plans without actually shipping or finding the physical sim cards I ordered EIOTCLUB sim card. It’s a special SIM card and you can flash up-to 8 different eSIM cards into the same physical card.
What is also very neat is that GL-inet recently launched support for EIOTCLUB sim cards directly in their routers. This means I was able to drag and drop the cheap Orange.fr plan in the router dashboard and use it directly there without their Android or iOS apps in between.
Using the eSIM with GL-inet router
GL-inet has written a very thorough tutorial on using eSIM cards on their routers. This is very bleeding edge feature as of December 2024 so you might need to upgrade to their unreleased versions like I needed. This is covered in their tutorial. I still needed to log out and log in to actually see the following eSIM Manage tab:
I proceeded to drag and drop my QR-code into the dashboard and was able to get the eSIM profile installed:
After this I noticed that I need to remove the PIN code in order to use the new eSIM card easily. My seller had provided me of PIN code 9439.
This can be achieved with cryptic commands by logging into GL-inet router with SSH or by using their AT-command tab in Cellular settings:
# Check if SIM is using a PIN code $ gl_modem -B 0001:01:00.0 AT 'AT+CPIN?' +CPIN: SIM PIN OK # Replace the 9439 with your pin code you want to remove $ gl_modem -B 0001:01:00.0 AT 'AT+CLCK="SC",0,"9439"' OK # Check that PIN code was removed $ gl_modem -B 0001:01:00.0 AT 'AT+CPIN?' +CPIN: READY OK
After this I still needed to manually setup the SIM card because GL-inet selected “orange-mib” as the default APN but it needed to be “orange.fr” instead.
After this I was able to connect to internet with my router using Cellular connection. I was sadly in a bad location and couldn’t do proper speed tests yet.
Other use cases for a physical eSIM adapter
Last spring I needed to move my eSIM card from my old iPhone to my new iPhone just to realize it wasn’t possible and I needed to remove the eSIM from my old phone first and call my provider customer service 4 times before it was resolved. I think having ability to flash the eSIM into arbitrary card is way more convenient and then it can be moved between different devices easily. I wish I would have just used an adapter like this and then moving to a new phone would have been much more smoother.
Conclusion
EIOTClub eSIM sim card adapter supports their own plans and unofficial eSIM plans as well like the one from orange.fr I used in this blog post. I needed to spend a bit of time to make everything work well together with my router but it worked nicely in the end. I didn’t yet use it from the iOS application but I imagine it will be easy as well.
By having this eSIM card adapter you can always ensure that you can use local eSIM cards wherever you go. I think this is a must have for anyone who travels and needs to use considerable amount of data.
EIOTClub is currently running a campaign and you can save 30% from their SIM card by using
eiotesim code at their checkout. After this the price is 13.93$ including shipping which is very good deal for product like this.EIOTClub supports my blog if you use the affiliate links mentioned in this page. Price for you is the same if you’re using affiliate link or not. Thanks 🙇!