Internet disruptions abroad: what can your eSIM actually protect?
European connectivity cannot be reduced to the roaming question. Spain and Portugal share a major electricity event; Italy adds a fixed-network DNS incident, Germany a .de DNSSEC failure, and Switzerland an operator disruption. For a visitor, the useful distinction is between losing mobile access, losing one resolver, and losing access to one class of websites. Switzerland is analysed separately from EU roaming rules; this study makes no claim about the reader’s domestic roaming entitlement.
Emmanuel Cerisola · Europe edition · Historical observations: January 2024 to August 2026
The findings, before buying another eSIM
An eSIM does not by itself prevent a tower, power or backhaul failure. It can provide an alternative when it changes a dependency that is still working, but a second brand, foreign IP or network list does not prove independence. This edition separates documented incidents, official notices and catalogue declarations.
5editorially selected destinations
5documented incidents, not a national total
41national fixed-data package references
5declared country / network / exit configurations
0 scheduled notices and 0 continuity cases are counted separately. The incident count belongs to this corpus; it does not measure annual outage frequency.
Five destinations, not five countries ranked by risk
Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Switzerland
The selection is editorial: documented examples, usefulness for trip planning and presence in the supplier’s technical catalogue. It is neither a top-five tourism ranking nor a random sample. An incident absent from this page is not proof of a fault-free network. The corpus is non-exhaustive and does not compare annual availability between countries.
Where the buyer lives does not by itself determine the network used abroad. Regionalisation changes destinations and explanations; it does not manufacture new measurements. Historical facts about the same country retain their date and limitations across editions.
An eSIM provides access to an infrastructure chain
Phone and installed profile
Tower and visited mobile network
Roaming agreements and transport
Internet exit and DNS
Final application or website
The downloadable profile replaces a SIM’s physical medium, not the towers or their power supply. If radio access fails, a data exit in another country does not restore that access. If only one application fails, maps and other messaging services may still work. Diagnosis needs to identify the failed dependency.
Not every “outage” means the same thing
Failure
What an alternative may change
What an eSIM does not establish
Power, tower, backhaul
Another access path with working infrastructure
Physical immunity from having a foreign IP
Operator fault
A genuinely different MNO, if authorised and reachable
Two stores equal two independent networks
DNS / DNSSEC
A different resolver may change some failures, not all
Intervals are described only as far as the source permits. Traffic windows, blocking periods and notices are not added to produce “hours without Internet”. Each record states its scope; provider statements and traffic observations are different kinds of evidence.
The five destinations, case by case
Spain
2025-04-28 · Power / infrastructure
The Iberian blackout of 28 April 2025 produced a major reduction in observed Internet traffic in Spain. An international eSIM does not remove the dependency on electrical infrastructure.
Limit: No uniform outage duration is inferred for all of Spain or every mobile operator.
In Portugal, Cloudflare observed national traffic initially falling by roughly half and later around 90% against the previous week. MEO-MOVEL traffic initially rose and then declined.
Limit: The mobile pattern illustrates how an alternative can work temporarily and later degrade. It does not establish the battery autonomy of any particular tower.
DENIC attributed restrictions affecting .de domains to invalid DNSSEC signatures generated during a key rollover. Validating resolvers rejected those responses.
Limit: This was not an outage of German 4G/5G. A foreign IP alone does not repair invalid DNSSEC signatures; behaviour also depends on the resolver.
The catalogue declares 10 national fixed-data references and 1 network/exit configurations for this destination. These are not 10 independent networks.
The snapshot was collected on 13 September 2026 (2026-09-13T11:05:12.815Z). The full catalogue contained 3046 references. This technical panel retains 41 unique codes whose location equals the destination ISO and dataType = 1. Regional bundles and daily or other product classes are excluded from this panel.
Destination
References offering coverage, overlapping
National fixed-data
Country / network / exit configurations
Spain
92
8
1
Portugal
92
7
1
Italy
92
8
1
Germany
93
8
1
Switzerland
95
10
1
The coverage column includes national products and products listing the country in a region. It is not added into a unique total: the same code can cover several destinations. Configurations are grouped by country, ipExport value and a sorted set of MNO names/network types. Different durations and allowances can share one configuration.
Advertised networks, without a switching promise
Destination
Declared MNO and technology
ipExport exit, unverified
Grouped package codes
Spain
Orange (5G) Movistar (5G)
FR/NL/UK
8
Portugal
Vodafone (5G) NOS (5G)
FR/NL/UK
7
Italy
TIM (5G) Iliad (5G) Wind (5G)
FR/NL/UK
8
Germany
O2 (5G) Vodafone (5G)
FR/NL/UK
8
Switzerland
Sunrise (5G) Salt (5G)
FR/NL/UK
10
In this panel, 0 references list one MNO name and 41 list more than one. Counting names does not establish priority, simultaneous coverage, manual selection or automatic switching during a fault. No brand is assigned a backup capability without testing the purchased profile.
A commercial name may represent a merged brand or share infrastructure with another name. Retaining two literal names in the data does not imply two separate radio networks. The list is published as a dated supplier declaration, not an independent certification.
IP exit: a useful clue, not a route measurement
ipExport is retained literally. It may identify a country or a broad region such as Europe. It cannot reconstruct every hop, identify the profile APN, confirm an IMSI or establish the ASN the buyer will use. It also does not identify the country of a speedtest server.
The speedtest server is the test’s destination, not necessarily the connection’s exit. Publishing an observed route requires recording the public IP, ASN and multiple geolocation sources alongside the connected MNO, time, device and test. Where possible, traceroute adds context; hidden hops or conflicting geolocation require keeping the uncertainty.
An exit outside the destination may change latency or the filtering encountered by a connection, but it does not guarantee greater speed or access to blocked services. This is a technical hypothesis for future tests, not a result observed during the incidents in this corpus.
Why a 5G label is not enough
Advertised technology describes a contractual or network possibility, not the state of a particular connection. The handset, bands, area, roaming and plan conditions all matter. If speed says 3G/4G while locationNetworkList advertises 5G, both fields remain in the data; the contradiction is not resolved by inventing a capability.
A quality comparison requires the same device, location and time window, with provider order alternated. Observed 4G/5G connection, latency, jitter, loss, download and upload need to be recorded alongside practical tasks. One fast speedtest does not establish availability during a fault, and this study publishes no provider podium.
A backup can also expire or require Internet
An alternative that is not yet installed may depend on the failed connection to download its profile. Before travelling, confirm receipt, compatibility, instructions and activation mechanism. eSIM Access documentation distinguishes installation-triggered activation from first connection at the destination; the actual code for each reference is retained without generalising to every brand.
Validity is not assumed to pause during an outage, and data or days are not assumed to be restored automatically. Hotspot, refund or FUP rules are not inferred from an MNO list. These conditions require the exact product terms and, for real-world validation, a record of purchase, installation, connection and expiry.
Save maps, tickets, the address, reservation number and accommodation contact offline. A documentary backup remains useful even when every reachable network fails.
Identify the MNO behind the main and backup plans, not just the seller’s logo. Ask whether manual selection of another network is allowed and retain the exact answer.
Install over a stable connection only when the activation rules allow it without losing days. Keep instructions without publishing QR codes, ICCIDs or credentials.
During a fault, compare at least two unrelated services. If maps work but one application does not, avoid treating the problem as the loss of all data.
Check allowance and expiry, briefly toggle airplane mode, and inspect the registered network and instructed APN. Do not delete the profile as a first step: reinstallation may require authorisation or connectivity.
Use Wi-Fi or another available network where appropriate, without assuming every Wi-Fi path is independent. Follow official notices and avoid testing critical services or generating heavy traffic during an emergency.
For Europe: distinguish EU destinations from Switzerland and check your own home-provider agreement separately. This is an outage study, not legal advice or a roaming-price comparison. A .de website problem can affect a traveller outside Germany too. Spain and Portugal illustrate a shared failure source, so two countries on a coverage list do not automatically provide two independent paths.
What field tests contribute and what is still missing
Existing field measurements describe a connection at its test location and time. They are not retrospectively converted into measurements during a historical fault. Future Thailand tests can couple registered network, IP exit and speedtest, but cannot establish what happened in Canada or Spain.
Future record
Comparison condition
Purchase and validity
One profile per provider: purchase, installation, first connection, usage and expiry recorded separately with timestamps.
Route and quality
Same device and site; repeated sessions and alternated order; IP/ASN with each speedtest, without treating the server as the exit.
Support and refund
Document response and resolution. A second profile only if the refund scenario requires an unused one.
Fix the period and five destinations before counting. Retain primary sources: operators, regulators, technical registries, traffic observatories or blocking measurements. Exclude unverified rumours.
Create one episode/country record with date, scope, category, source and limitation. One blackout affecting Spain and Portugal creates two country records, not two independent causes.
Distinguish traffic observation, blocking measurement, operator statement, scheduled notice and continuity. A traffic reduction against the previous week is not the percentage of disconnected users.
Query /open/package/list using the existing integrated client without buying profiles. Export the selected technical fields; exclude wholesale costs, secrets and subscriber data.
Filter national references by location exactly equal to the ISO and dataType = 1. Deduplicate by packageCode. Group configurations by country + literal ipExport + sorted MNO/technology.
Keep the original catalogue timestamp separate from the editorial review date. Publish JSON and linked sources. Do not fill missing fields with assumptions.
Panel formula: reference count = cardinality of unique packageCode values after filtering. Configuration count = sum of within-country groups. Incident count = records not classified as notice or continuity. No denominator of observed hours is calculated, so there is no availability rate.
What this edition cannot establish
It does not identify the country with the most outages or an annual traveller-risk rate.
It does not rank providers by resilience. One wholesaler’s catalogue does not represent the whole market.
It does not verify automatic switching, MNO priority, hotspot, APN, IMSI, ASN or the profile’s actual route.
It does not assign an ASN’s traffic reduction or duration to each user. Networks and devices do not have the same observation scope.
It does not assume every blocked service becomes accessible through a foreign IP, and does not recommend evading local rules.
It does not assess emergency calls, SMS or rescue availability on a data-only eSIM. It is not a real-time safety tool.
Commercial transparency
Drift Europa sells eSIMs and uses eSIM Access as a supplier. Emmanuel Cerisola runs this activity and publication. The catalogue is a supplier declaration, not an independent audit of its network agreements. Drift Europa is neither certified nor given an advantage over other sellers.
No outages were induced, no profiles were bought for this edition, and no support or refund requests were sent. Customer tests will be published separately when evidence exists. No synthetic score or index is added to these data.
Frequently asked questions
Does an eSIM work during a blackout?
Only if its access and infrastructure chain remain operational. The eSIM format does not power towers or repair backhaul. This corpus does not measure each profile’s service duration during a blackout.
Are two eSIM brands two backup networks?
Not necessarily. They can depend on the same MNO, wholesaler or exit. Check the exact plan and observe the profile rather than comparing logos.
Does a foreign IP mean data avoids the country?
No. The phone still uses local radio access. ipExport is a declaration; IP geolocation and traceroute add observations, but can leave uncertainty.
Does 5G mean better availability?
It cannot be concluded from a label. Power, DNS or application faults can prevent use even when the handset displays 5G. Comparable tests are required.
Are scheduled notices treated as measured outages?
No. They are shown separately with their category and announced window. Actual implementation per eSIM was not measured. Continuity cases are also excluded from the incident count.
Which provider withstands outages best?
This publication cannot answer that. The technical panel comes from one supplier and contains no fault tests using purchased profiles. No winner is invented.
Editorial review: 14 September 2026. Source pages may be updated; the episode date remains in each record. The catalogue retains its 13 September timestamp and is not presented as a publication-day collection.
Suggested citation: Drift Europa, “Internet disruptions abroad: what can your eSIM actually protect?”, Europe edition, 14 September 2026. Retain the catalogue date, five destinations and distinction between incidents, notices and continuity.
Original counts and analysis may be cited with attribution and a link. Third-party measurements and statements retain their own attribution; this page does not relicense their content. The technical JSON excludes wholesale costs, credentials and subscriber profiles.