Japan ski trip to 3gmrc.com.au

March 29, 2026
3 min read

How We Got Into eSIMs

People sometimes ask why we sell travel eSIMs when we started as a phone repair business. The answer is actually pretty simple. I became a customer first.

We run a phone repair business in Sydney, and a few years ago I was sitting in Japan for a few weeks on a ski trip. Like most Australians travelling overseas, I just turned on roaming with my Australian carrier. It was about $5 per day, which at the time sounded cheap enough.

But then I actually added it up.

We were there for three weeks.
$5 per day for me, $5 per day for my wife.
That’s about $150 just in roaming.

Then you still pay your normal phone plan in Australia, which was around $60 per month each. So now the total for the month was getting up around $420 just to use our phones overseas.

When you hear “$5 per day”, it sounds cheap.
When you add it up properly, it’s not cheap at all.

Finding eSIMs

So I started looking around online while I was in Japan and came across a company called Airalo, who we now partner with. They provide the data networks and coverage behind our eSIMs.

One of the good things about Airalo is that in many countries they don’t rely on just one network. Just like in Australia we have Telstra, Optus and Vodafone, many countries have multiple networks, and the eSIM can connect to different providers depending on coverage and location.

Anyway, I found a special on a Japan eSIM.
From memory it was something like $15 for 20GB on a promotion. This was pre-COVID, so prices have changed since then, but I thought I’d give it a go.

I installed it, turned it on, and that was it. My phone just worked.

Maps worked.
Messages worked.
Emails worked.
Everything worked the same as at home.

I actually used all the data and had to top it up because I was running the business from Japan at the time, so I was a pretty heavy user. But even topping it up, it still cost a fraction of what roaming would have cost.

Instead of spending a few hundred dollars, I was spending maybe $20 or $30.

That’s when I realised this was a no-brainer.

From Customer to Business

When I got back to Australia, I couldn’t stop talking about eSIMs to customers. A lot of our customers travel, and we repair a lot of phones, so it made sense for us to help people set up travel data as well.

So we approached Airalo and became partners with them, and we started selling SIM cards and eSIMs over the counter in our stores in Leichhardt and Kellyville.

People loved it because we could: