Travel eSIM Bought for Its Low Price Turns Out to Use a Chinese Roaming Network

[Financial News] Concerns have been raised that some eSIM products, now considered essential items for overseas travel, resell roaming services from Chinese mobile carriers without clearly informing consumers, potentially exposing them to harm.
Consumers may experience poor connectivity while traveling after purchasing a product based solely on its low price. There are also calls for disclosure standards because it can be difficult to determine which carrier’s service is being used.
According to political and telecommunications industry sources on the 5th, Lee Jun-seok of the Reform Party recently criticized regulatory blind spots at the Ministry of Science and ICT while pointing out the sales and disclosure practices of travel eSIM products during a plenary meeting of the Special Committee on Budget and Accounts of the National Assembly.
Some eSIM products used in third countries such as Japan and Vietnam do not directly use local carriers’ services. Instead, they resell roaming products from Chinese telecommunications carriers, including China Mobile.
Travel eSIMs are broadly divided into “local network” products that connect directly to a local telecommunications network and “roaming network” products that connect to a local network through a third-country carrier’s roaming service. Roaming-network products are often relatively inexpensive, but some sellers have been criticized for failing to adequately disclose that they use products from Chinese carriers.
There are currently no clear standards specifying how carriers or data-routing structures must be disclosed when eSIMs are sold, resulting in inconsistent practices among providers. Some companies also advertise products as offering “unlimited data” even though users can access them only at restricted speeds after exhausting their basic data allowance, raising concerns about consumer confusion.
Roaming products offered by domestic telecommunications companies also allow users to continue using data at a certain speed after exhausting their allotted data. However, the government considers the expression “unlimited data” false or exaggerated advertising, so domestic carriers do not use the term.
Service quality is another concern. Unlike products that connect directly to a local network, roaming-network eSIMs pass through a third-country carrier’s roaming system, which may increase internet latency or reduce speeds depending on the user’s environment.
Lee emphasized that users should be able to know in advance which carrier’s service they are using, including from a security perspective. He said, “Many people bought these products thinking they were local eSIMs, but they were actually Chinese eSIMs. Couldn’t the phone’s unique information be registered on a Chinese server the moment the phone is turned on locally?” He added that authorities should carefully examine whether the use of a Chinese carrier is important information that must be disclosed to consumers.
Article 50 of the Telecommunications Business Act prohibits conduct that harms users’ interests, such as failing to disclose important information related to the use of telecommunications services or providing false information. An industry official said, “Low-cost eSIMs that resell products from Chinese carriers pass through multiple layers of intermediaries, so when quality problems such as service outages occur locally, it is unclear who is responsible.” Another industry official added, “Rather than being swayed solely by the price, it is safer to check whether the telecommunications product is contracted directly with a local carrier before purchasing it.”
[email protected] Choi Hye-rim Reporter