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MagyarFirsty eSim could be the perfect travel backup sim: free and permanent internet access worldwide, albeit with restrictions
E-Sims, i.e. the built-in replacement for the small plastic cards in some smartphones like iPhones or Samsung Galaxy Phones, are immensely practical, especially when you are traveling. Gone are the days when you had to accept expensive roaming charges or get a SIM card from a mobile provider at the airport in a foreign country. These days, you download the normally quite inexpensive access to your cell phone in advance and can start surfing immediately after landing on foreign soil.
Countless eSIM providers around the world tempt you with ever cheaper prices and deals. Thanks to comparison websites like eSIMDB everyone can find what they need, but up until now completely free options were mostly missing. Dutch startup Firsty plans to change that. Two ex-Ayden technicians from Amsterdam want to put mobile internet for travelers on a new and partly free footing, initially in Europe and the USA, in a few weeks (from March 2024) in almost 100 countries worldwide and even globally long term.
Firsty Free is ad-based and really slow
After downloading the Firstly app (Play Store | App Store) and registering with your cell phone number, you can access the Internet for free, but at a very reduced speed and only for 60 minutes after which you are obliged to watch a short advertising video. Notifications warn you ahead of time when its time for a few seconds of advertising but you can fulfill your obligation in between and do not have to wait for your free session to end.
The heavy connection throttling is definitely a bit problematic. Despite the 5G symbol in the status bar, you are a long way from LTE or 5G performance. In our speed test, we usually achieved just under 0.06 Mbps in download and 0.14 Mbps in upload speeds, which is just enough for messengers such as Whatsapp or iMessage, email is fine as well. If necessary, Google Maps should work if you have downloaded the maps in advance. Some websites run into timeouts, and you can basically forget about watching videos or streaming at these speeds. In our short test, we only used Firstly in the Vienna, Austria area, but according to the startup, the slow access should be available in every country where Firsty works.
Upgrade to Firsty Fast looks expensive
Thanks to us reporting some bugs to the team - support was fast and very helpful by the way - we also got the opportunity to try out the startup's second product for a day: Firsty Fast. Here, all speed barriers fall and we achieved around 224 Mbps in download and just under 30 Mbps in upload, which obviously also depends on the network you are in and the capabilities of your phone. However, we feel like this upgrade option, which offers a fast 2 GB data package per day for 3,5 Euros ($3,8) in Europe is comparatively expensive. If you buy a 30 day package of Firsty Fast, you currently pay around 60 euros ($66) in Europe, i.e. just under 1 euro per gigabyte. While this is not a lot per se, it is only worth it if you really need that much daily data. In other regions the Firstly Fast prices might vary, they generally start at around 2€ or $2,1 per day.
The ideal travel backup sim?
In our opinion, installing the Firsty eSIM is definitely worthwhile, even if you don't travel much in foreign countries. The free offer is good enough to write messages, find your way to a hotel or organize faster internet if your regular data package has just expired. In our testing, hotspot functionality also worked with both Firstly Fast and Firstly Free, however with the free option its obviously not very useful. If Firsty Free is available in more countries as a free basic internet access package, it would be the ideal backup sim without having to rely on Wi-FI at the airport, provided the advertising does not get more intrusive than it is now.
Obviously you should also check out the privacy policy before using a free service like this one. We do hope that this startup survives the the test of time and perhaps even considers adding more attractive data packages. 2 GB per day is likely overkill for most travelers who don't watch tiktok videos all day or upload lots of data to the cloud. Thus, classic packages with 2-10 GB per month without speed limits could turn the backup sim into a real Firsty eSIM for everyday globetrotting.
Source(s)
Firsty, Own
