eSIM Not Working After You Land? Start Here

Start at the top and stop when it works. The first two items resolve the large majority of cases and take seconds each, so there is no reason to skip ahead to anything involving an APN.

One: data roaming ON for the vigxo line. Two: that line switched on and selected as the line carrying mobile data. Three: airplane mode off and on, then a restart. Four: read what the line reports, because a blank carrier field and a connected-but-dead connection are different problems. Five: pick a network by hand. Six, and only six, an APN.

Two things are worth knowing before you start, because they cause most of the panic. Installing the eSIM did not start your plan — validity begins at the first connection, not at purchase. And nothing in these settings screens consumes data, so working through the whole list costs you nothing from your allowance.

This is the most common cause by some distance, and counter-intuitive enough that people rule it out because they assume they know better. A travel eSIM is a foreign profile attaching to a local network, which is the technical definition of roaming, and the Data Roaming switch is what permits that attachment. With it off, the profile is installed, the line looks healthy, and nothing connects.

Turning it on for the vigxo line does not expose you to a bill from your home carrier, because your home carrier is not involved: the plan is prepaid and the connection runs over a local partner network. The switch that costs money is data roaming on your HOME line, which should stay off. The two are worded identically and do opposite things.

On iPhone: Settings, then Cellular — Mobile Data or Mobile Service in some regions — then tap the vigxo line and turn Data Roaming on. On Android: Settings, Network and internet, then SIMs or Mobile network. Samsung puts it under Connections, then SIM manager. Wording varies by manufacturer; what you want is a per-line switch, not a global one.

Installing a profile does not put it to work. It adds a second line to a phone that already has one, and the phone carries on using the line it was using before.

Two settings, and people routinely get one and miss the other. The vigxo line has to be turned on — some install flows leave a new line disabled, and because the standing advice is to install at home and leave it dormant, plenty of travellers switched it off weeks ago and forgot. It then has to be selected as the line that carries mobile data.

On iPhone: Settings, Cellular, Cellular Data, and pick the line. While you are there, turn off Allow Cellular Data Switching, or the phone may fall back to your home line whenever it judges the eSIM to be struggling. On Android it is the mobile data preference or data SIM setting; on Samsung, Preferred SIM card inside SIM manager. Leave calls and texts on your home line — a vigxo eSIM is data-only and cannot carry them.

If the settings are right and there is still nothing, the next step is to make the phone look again.

A handset that has just come off a plane has spent hours with its radios off, and it does not always re-scan cleanly on the way back up. Airplane mode on, a pause, then off forces a fresh scan of everything in range. If that changes nothing, restart, which does the same more thoroughly and clears whatever the failed attempt left behind.

This resolves a real share of cases and costs nothing, which is why it comes before anything technical. Give it a couple of minutes after each attempt: attaching on arrival is not instant, it varies with the airport and the network, and some of these were going to work anyway while the traveller was looking too early.

From here the phone is telling you which of two different problems you have, and they have little in common.

Look at the vigxo line in your cellular settings. No carrier at all, No Service, or an indefinite Searching means the phone has not attached to a network — a radio problem, and the next section is the one you want. A network name and signal bars with nothing loading means it is attached and the problem is further up.

While you are there, confirm you are in a country the plan covers. A country plan works in that country only, and region names are not self-explanatory: a Europe plan and a country in Europe are not automatically the same thing, and a stopover is not always inside the same plan as the destination. Every plan lists its coverage on its own page under /destinations.

When the line finds nothing on automatic, or attaches to something that barely works, selecting a network by hand is the next thing to try. Automatic selection takes the first acceptable network rather than the best one, and in a crowded arrivals hall it can settle on a partner with almost no usable capacity.

On iPhone: Settings, Cellular, the vigxo line, then Network Selection, turn Automatic off and wait for the operator list to build. On Android the equivalent sits under the SIM or mobile network screen as Network operators, or behind a Choose network automatically toggle. Pick a local operator, give it a moment, and if it does not attach, try the next.

Two caveats. Not every operator in that list carries our traffic, so a network appearing there does not mean the eSIM can use it — if one fails, try another rather than concluding the eSIM is dead. And set the phone back to automatic before you travel on, or it will keep reaching for a network it can no longer see.

The APN tells the phone which gateway to push data through. A travel eSIM sets it automatically, and most people should never open this screen at all.

It matters in one situation: the line shows a network and signal, everything above has been tried, and data still will not move. Even then the usual culprit is a leftover entry — one typed in for a previous SIM, or left behind by a carrier app, now overriding the automatic setting. On iPhone the screen is Settings, Cellular, the vigxo line, then Cellular Data Network, absent on some phones because carriers can hide it. On Android it is Access Point Names.

If you find an entry that clearly belongs to something else, reset to defaults rather than inventing a replacement. If a specific value is genuinely needed for your plan, support has it. Do not copy one from a forum post about another provider: an APN belonging to a different network will not work on ours.

A recurring version of this problem is not a connection failure at all. Someone installs the eSIM a week before the trip, sees it sitting in the phone settings, assumes the clock started that day, and lands believing the plan has already expired.

It has not. Validity begins when the eSIM first connects to a network at your destination, not when you buy it and not when you install it. The profile can sit dormant for weeks, which is why the advice everywhere is to install at home, on wifi, the day you buy. The one way to start the window early is to let the line connect before you travel, so leave it off until you land. The steps are at /get-connected.

To see where you actually stand, open your dashboard, where each eSIM shows its usage. That figure syncs periodically rather than live, so treat it as close rather than exact. If you have genuinely run out, a reloadable plan tops up onto the profile already on your phone, with nothing to reinstall.

Nearly every remaining configuration error comes from the phone having two lines while the traveller thinks about one. The commonest is working on the wrong one: a settings screen with two entries looks identical whichever is open, and people turn data roaming on for their physical SIM — the wrong line, and the expensive one — then conclude the eSIM is faulty. Label the vigxo line unmistakably at install.

The next is the home line quietly taking the data back, which on iPhone is Allow Cellular Data Switching doing what it was designed to do. The symptom is confusing because you do have internet: it is arriving through your home carrier at roaming rates instead of through the plan you paid for.

The third is the physical SIM being the problem itself. If the home line is barred, or the handset is carrier-locked, the phone can behave strangely on both lines. Switching the home line off temporarily is a clean test: if the eSIM connects without it, the conflict is between the lines rather than inside the eSIM. Full dual-SIM setup is at /guides/essentials/esim-and-normal-sim-dual-sim.

A line showing a network and signal bars while serving no pages is a different failure, and frequently not the eSIM at all. Check a VPN first: one set to reconnect automatically will sit there failing on an unfamiliar network, and every app behind it looks broken while the connection underneath is fine.

Then the phone-level restrictions people forget they enabled — Low Data Mode on iPhone or Data Saver on Android, per-app cellular permissions switched off at some point, any content blocker or private DNS setting. It is also worth knowing whether the app you are testing with is blocked at network level in that country, which is a property of where you stand rather than of your plan. The country guides under /guides say where that applies.

Finally, test with a plain web page rather than an app. Apps fail for their own reasons and make a poor diagnostic. If a page loads, your data is working and what you are debugging is the app.

Almost everything above is easier to handle at home than in an arrivals hall, and some of it can only be handled at home. Confirm the phone is eSIM-capable and carrier-unlocked before you buy, at /device-check — a locked handset will accept the profile and then refuse to use it, and no setting at your destination fixes that.

Install on wifi, the day you buy. Downloading the profile needs an internet connection, which is precisely what you will not have when you land. If the QR will not scan — a printout, a cracked screen, a code displayed on the only phone available to read it — the profile can be added by hand using the SM-DP+ address and activation code in the same email.

Then leave it alone. Do not delete a profile you still intend to use: on most phones a deleted eSIM cannot be reinstalled from the same QR code, which turns a settings problem into a real one. Save the confirmation email offline, or screenshot the QR, so you are not depending on internet to find the thing that gives you internet.

A troubleshooting page that implies everything is fixable is not being straight with you. Some of these are not yours to solve, and recognising one early saves an hour of settings archaeology: a carrier-locked handset, a device that is not eSIM-capable, a profile deleted and no longer reinstallable, a country the plan does not cover, a local network outage, and an eSIM that never provisioned. Nothing in your settings addresses any of those.

If the eSIM has never been installed, you are entitled to a full refund with no time limit — which covers the phone that turned out to be incompatible or locked, and the trip that did not happen. The policy is at /refunds and the request is a button on the order in your dashboard.

Once a profile has been installed it is not refundable as a matter of policy, because installation releases the allowance to you and it cannot be put back. The exception is where the fault is ours: an eSIM that failed to provision after a confirmed payment will be re-provisioned or refunded. That is worth stating plainly rather than leaving you to discover it by arguing.

Either way, use the contact form at vigxoesim.com/contact with your order reference, what the line shows, which country you are in, and what you have already tried — the last one saves an exchange. Written answers to the frequent versions of this are at /help. If you are reading this before buying and it has made you nervous, check the handset at /device-check first, then buy knowing the plan is fully refundable until the moment you install it.