“Throttled at exactly 1GB” — it’s not your imagination
A real traveller’s report. Your “unlimited” plan almost certainly has one line of fine print; this page reads it out loud.
Throttled? What to do now
Either way, the fix is the same: install a card that charges by usage.
- 1
Find WiFi
Hotel, convenience store, café, station. If you can open a web page, you can finish the next two steps.
- 2
Install a soda eSIM
Everything happens online — the eSIM downloads straight to your phone. No physical card, no store. You see the full current tariff before paying.
First, check that your phone supports eSIM → - 3
Pay by usage — no gigabytes to guess
The rest of your trip is billed on what you actually use. Every 30 days it settles at the lowest total automatically, and your balance never expires.
What happened: the fair-usage policy
Most “unlimited” roaming plans say, in the fine print: full speed up to a threshold (typically 500MB–2GB per day, or a trip total), then 128kbps–1Mbps. At 128kbps a map tile struggles to load. The threshold triggers automatically — that’s why it feels surgically precise. It literally is a line of code.
Why providers design it this way
Unlimited pricing works because most people don’t use much. Whoever actually uses it gets throttled to claw the cost back. You didn’t hit an edge case — you are the case the plan was designed around.
soda has no throttle tier
soda bills actual usage. There is no “unlimited, but…”. Tell us your destinations — no gigabytes to guess; within each 30-day window, the tariff disclosed before payment applies the lower price automatically. Use more, pay more; use less, pay less. No page-7 fine print.
How it worksSort your data before you fly
A short pre-trip check, with the line ready before you go. Your balance never expires.