As the Gaza Strip enters its second week of a near-total phone and internet blackout, some people in the war-torn enclave are using a lesser-known technology — eSIM cards — as a last grasp at contact with the outside world.
Most newer smartphones let users load an electronic SIM card rather than a physical one, both of which grant users access to wireless networks. Some Palestinians have resorted to using donated phone plans registered in other countries to catch a roaming signal from Israeli or Egyptian cell towers to reach people outside the region.
“Some of the Israeli networks reach inside Gaza,” Suhail Nassar, a photographer in Gaza who uses Instagram to document the war, told NBC via WhatsApp. “We don’t have any local network available right now. So either we buy the eSIMs or people around the world collect eSIMs for us and send them through WhatsApp, through emails,” he said.
The eSIMs are far from a perfect solution: Older phones can’t use them and an existing connection is needed to download new ones. Some of the eSIMs don’t work properly. And it can be hard to catch a signal from a cell tower across a border, Nassar said, which often requires climbing somewhere high, like the exposed roof of a building.
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