The roaming debate usually starts with price. How much will my operator charge me? Would a travel eSIM be cheaper? Is there a local SIM at the airport?

New World Cup data suggests there is another question travellers should be asking: will roaming give me the same network experience as a local user?

MedUX analysed connectivity during the 2026 FIFA World Cup across the United States, Canada and Mexico, combining passive observations from hundreds of thousands of devices with more than four million controlled speed and video tests. Its findings point to substantial performance differences between international visitors and residents—even when they were using networks in the same country.

READ MORE: Travel eSIM Growth: Small Share, Big Market Signal

That matters because the problem was not simply weak coverage. In several cases, visitors appeared to be getting a different version of an otherwise strong mobile network. MedUX sells network-measurement services, so the findings are best treated as evidence rather than the final word.

What the data found

Nationally, the biggest gaps appeared in the US and Canada. MedUX reported that visitor median download speeds were 50% below resident levels in the United States and 48% lower in Canada.

The 5G figures were just as telling:

• United States: visitors were connected to 5G 54% of the time, versus 77% for residents.
• Canada: 32% for visitors, versus 64% for residents.
• Mexico: the national picture was much closer, with visitors at 10% and residents at 8%.

The comparison became more striking around stadiums, where MedUX analysed users within roughly one-kilometre areas. US roamers were observed on 5G 40% of the time compared with 82% for nearby residents. In Canada, it was 32% versus 65%. Mexico, which looked close to parity nationally, showed a stadium-area gap of 8% versus 17%.

That same-area analysis is important. It weakens the obvious explanation that tourists were simply spending time in different places from local users.

Roaming is still the default

Despite years of travel-eSIM growth, most World Cup visitors still used their home operator abroad. MedUX estimated home-operator roaming at 85% of visitors in Canada, 91% in the US and 93% in Mexico.

So this is not a niche technical issue. It concerns the way most international travellers still connect.

READ MORE: Roaming Steering: How Operators Decide Which Network You Land On

Device capability explains part of the difference, but not all of it. In the US, visitors had a larger share of 4G-only handsets. When MedUX limited the comparison to 5G-capable devices, about half of the original 5G connection gap could be associated with device mix. A meaningful difference remained.

That leaves the more interesting variables: visitor origin, home operator, visited network, roaming agreement, network steering and service configuration. In other words, “5G available” and “5G experienced by a roamer” are not necessarily the same thing.

The eSIM signal

The most commercially interesting finding is also the one that needs the most careful wording.

MedUX observed users with local SIMs and travel eSIMs in the US and Canada closer to resident 5G performance than conventional home-operator roamers. That does not prove that travel eSIMs are inherently faster. The public data does not break the results down by individual eSIM provider, underlying wholesale partner or sufficiently detailed sample sizes. (medux.com)

READ MORE: Travel eSIMs vs Local SIM Cards: Real Prices, Real Scenarios

Still, it challenges a common assumption: that choosing roaming, a local SIM or a travel eSIM changes only the bill.

It may also change the network experience.

For a traveller deciding between options, price and data allowance therefore tell only part of the story. A cheap travel eSIM routed inefficiently can still disappoint; a good roaming agreement can perform very well. For longer stays, a direct local operator SIM or eSIM may remain the cleaner option. What matters is the actual connectivity path behind the product.

What needs measuring next

MedUX’s work is useful precisely because it exposes how much current comparison content misses. A proper roaming-versus-eSIM benchmark should control for connection type, visitor origin, home operator, visited network, device capability, location and 5G connection share—not just run a handful of speed tests.

The missing layer is provider-level transparency.

Which travel eSIMs were measured? Which host networks did they use? Were they routed locally or through a distant core? Did performance vary by origin country? How did video quality, latency and consistency compare, not just headline download speed?

READ MORE: Travel eSIM Latency: What Really Determines Speed?

Those answers would turn an interesting World Cup dataset into something travellers and roaming teams could use to make much sharper decisions.

Conclusion

MedUX did not discover that roaming is “bad.” It showed something more useful: access to the same host-country network does not guarantee the same experience.

That fits a wider pattern. Opensignal previously found that international roamers across 20 cities spent substantially less time connected to 5G than local users, while the GSMA has been developing more explicit Quality of Experience metrics for roaming. The industry itself is moving beyond the idea that successful roaming simply means the phone connected.

READ MORE: The Latency Report Continues: Mapping the World’s Most Reliable eSIM Routes

For operators, that raises a retention problem. If customers pay a premium for seamless roaming but receive a visibly weaker experience, travel eSIMs and local eSIMs gain another selling point beyond price. For travel-eSIM providers, however, this is not permission to claim victory. They now have a better opportunity—and a higher burden—to prove performance with transparent, network-specific data.

The next useful travel-connectivity comparison should not ask only, “How much data do I get?”

It should ask: “What network experience am I actually buying?”