I almost lost a client because I trusted hotel WiFi in Barcelona.
Forty-five minutes scheduled. A password that worked the night before. Then the call dropped, and my client watched me freeze mid-sentence. If you work on the road, you know this exact fear.
I was on a client call. Video, forty-five minutes scheduled. The hotel had given me the WiFi password, and I'd tested it the night before. All fine.
Two minutes in, it dropped. I rejoined. It dropped again. My client could see me freezing mid-sentence. I switched to my carrier's roaming, and an error notification popped up.
The kind of message no freelancer wants to see mid-pitch. I finished the call sitting on the hotel lobby floor, phone hotspotted to my laptop, burning through $34 of roaming data in twenty minutes.
The client was forgiving. But I never took that risk again.
3 reasons remote workers stop trusting hotel WiFi
The bandwidth you tested at midnight is gone by 3pm when the whole floor is online. A dedicated eSIM connection doesn't buckle under everyone else's load.
Switch to carrier roaming when the WiFi drops and the surprise charges start stacking. An eSIM is priced before you fly, so there's no meter running during your pitch.
Clients remember buffering, not excuses. A dual-network eSIM fails over automatically, so a weak signal never becomes a lost contract.
What I run now
Now I run Jetpac. Dual network: if the primary signal drops, it switches over automatically. I pay around $20 for a week in Spain. No roaming surprises, no dropped calls, no explaining to clients why I look like I'm buffering.
Why not just any eSIM?
There are a few well-known names, and any of them beats hotel WiFi. Where Jetpac pulls ahead for people who work on the road is dual-network auto-switching, so a dropped signal fails over instantly instead of mid-call, plus essential apps that keep working when capped data runs low, and a 4.8 Trustpilot rating from 500,000+ travellers.
Before you set it up
Yes. Dual-network coverage means if your primary carrier drops mid-call, it fails over to the second network automatically, so a weak signal doesn't turn into a frozen screen in front of a client.
On capped plans up to 15GB, Google Maps, WhatsApp and Uber keep working even at 0GB, so you're never fully cut off between deadlines. You can also top up in the app in seconds.
No. It's a two-minute QR scan at home before you fly. Your normal SIM stays untouched, so calls and texts on your existing number keep working too.
If your flight is delayed by more than 30 minutes, you get free lounge access, a calmer place to take a call than the gate.
$1/day, capped plans
Set it up before you fly and land connected in 200+ destinations.