A holiday phone bill should be one of travel’s more boring details. Instead, it has become a source of genuine pre-trip anxiety for many Americans—apparently more troubling than the possibility of getting sick abroad.

New research promoted by travel eSIM provider Saily says 74% of Americans feel stressed about roaming charges, compared with 31% who worry about illness or injury while travelling. The company also reports that 90% have encountered unexpected mobile-data charges abroad and that half believe the overall cost of travel is harming their mental well-being.

Those figures are attention-grabbing, but they need careful handling. The material published with the survey does not disclose the sample size, fieldwork dates, polling company or wording of the questions. That makes the percentages useful as a signal of consumer sentiment, not a definitive measurement of every American traveller’s experience.

The more credible story is not that roaming is statistically more dangerous than illness. It is that mobile connectivity has become essential while its cost still feels unpredictable.

The problem is uncertainty, not simply high prices

Travellers now depend on their phones for boarding passes, maps, ride-hailing, translation, banking alerts, hotel messages and two-factor authentication. Turning off mobile data may prevent charges, but it can also remove the tools that make an unfamiliar destination manageable.

That creates an awkward choice: stay connected and worry about the bill, or disconnect and make the trip harder. Roaming anxiety sits precisely in that gap.

“Staying connected has moved from a luxury to a basic travel necessity, but the legacy of high roaming fees has created a unique form of anxiety,”

said Vykintas Maknickas, Saily’s CEO. His role is confirmed on Saily’s current press page, although the survey itself is naturally being used to support the case for prepaid travel eSIMs.

READ MORE: Roaming Charges Explained: What You Really Pay

The fear is not entirely irrational. In 2024, an American traveller received a widely reported $143,000 bill after using his phone during a trip to Switzerland; the carrier later credited the charges. Extreme cases are unusual, but they have helped make “roaming bill shock” part of the travelling public’s vocabulary.

More commonly, the surprise is smaller and entirely legitimate: a daily pass activates because the phone used a few kilobytes of background data, or several family lines each trigger their own charge.

US roaming is easier than it was—and still expensive

Major US operators have made international roaming more manageable through daily passes and included benefits. Verizon currently charges $12 per line per day for TravelPass in most supported destinations, while AT&T’s International Day Pass also costs $12 for the first line. Both allow customers to use domestic-plan allowances abroad, subject to their respective conditions.

That is considerably more predictable than old-fashioned pay-per-megabyte roaming. It is not necessarily cheap. A traveller using a $12 pass every day of a two-week holiday would pay $168 for one line, before taxes or additional family devices.

T-Mobile takes a different approach on several premium plans, including a set amount of high-speed data in more than 215 destinations, followed by slower unlimited connectivity. It also sells international passes for customers who need more speed or calling.

READ MORE: How Does Travel eSIM Work, Exactly?

This variety is good for competition but difficult for consumers. The correct choice depends on the domestic plan, destination, trip length, number of lines, data consumption and whether voice calls matter. A travel eSIM may cost less, but many are data-only. A carrier pass keeps the home number fully usable and is often simpler for travellers who value convenience over the lowest possible price.

The eSIM industry sometimes presents the decision as “expensive roaming versus cheap eSIM.” Real life is messier. Some American plans already include useful international data, while some eSIM plans have speed limits, hotspot restrictions, short validity periods or routing that can affect performance.

The real opportunity is predictable connectivity

Saily’s recommendation to buy prepaid data before departure is commercially convenient, but the principle is sound: travellers are calmer when they know the price before the phone connects.

That does not automatically mean buying an eSIM. It means checking the home plan, calculating the cost of a carrier pass, comparing it with a local or travel eSIM and deciding how calls and verification messages will be handled. The important step is moving connectivity into the travel budget rather than discovering it on the bill.

The US also offers an interesting contrast with the European Union, where Roam Like at Home rules allow subscribers to use mobile services across the EU and European Economic Area without additional roaming charges, subject to fair-use conditions. Those protections have been extended until 2032. American travellers using US SIMs in Europe do not benefit from that regulation.

This regulatory difference helps explain why roaming remains a consumer product to be actively managed in the US rather than a largely invisible part of regional mobility.

Conclusion: Roaming anxiety is a product-design problem

Saily’s survey should not be read as proof that phone bills are a greater objective travel risk than illness. Without published methodology, its boldest comparisons remain company-reported claims.

Yet the underlying frustration is believable. Travellers do not merely dislike paying for connectivity; they dislike not knowing what an ordinary tap, sync or notification might cost.

The strongest market opportunity for eSIM providers and mobile operators is therefore not another dramatic promise of “no roaming fees.” It is clearer pricing, simpler activation, visible limits and fewer ways for customers to make an expensive mistake without realising it.

A vacation should not require a telecom risk assessment. Until connectivity products become easier to understand, many travellers will continue treating the phone bill as the souvenir they most fear bringing home.