India eSIM
Data for India on Jio and Airtel, from $7.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and refills land on the line you already have, with nothing new to install.
- Networks
- Jio and Airtel
- Typical speed
- 46 Mbps typical, 9 Mbps at busy times
- 5G
- yes, standalone
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for India
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $7.89 | $7.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $4.30 | $12.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $3.78 | $18.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $3.19 | $31.89 | |
| 20 GB | Never expires | $2.54 | $50.89 |
Every plan works the moment you land. Unused data returns to your wallet when the line closes, and customers get at least 100 MB of free rescue data a month even at zero balance.
What 46 Mbps actually means in India
Typical download speed on Orbislo in India: 46 Mbps. That sits close to the Asia median of 43.9 Mbps, which makes India an unremarkable place to be connected, in the good sense.
The tenth percentile drops to 9 Mbps, a long way below the median. In practice that means India is quick when the cell is quiet and difficult when it is not. Download your maps and your boarding passes before you need them.
That is enough for everything most travellers do: maps, messaging, video calls, streaming at high definition, and tethering a laptop for ordinary work. It is not enough to be casual about uploading a day of raw photographs.
Which networks you will be on
Orbislo carries traffic in India on Jio and Airtel. Your phone is not tied to one of them. When the network you are attached to congests or drops, the profile moves you to the other, and it happens without a prompt and without you noticing anything except that the connection kept working.
This matters more than the headline speed. Almost every travel eSIM sold today resells a single upstream agreement per country, so when that one network has a bad hour you have a bad hour with it and your only option is to buy a second eSIM from somebody else. A profile with more than one network behind it can make a decision you never see.
5G in India: yes, standalone. Worth knowing that 5G on a travel profile is normal rather than special, and that the tenth percentile above is the number that will decide how the trip feels, not the generation label in the status bar.
What data costs in India
A 100 MB plan for India starts at $0.41, which is $0.00 a gigabyte. That is the number to compare between providers, because a headline price attached to a different allowance tells you nothing.
The comparison most providers would rather you did not run is cost per gigabyte actually used. Independent surveys of travel data put the share of purchased data lost to expiry between 20 and 35 percent, because a plan that expires on day thirty deletes what you did not get through. Orbislo data has no expiry date, so the gigabyte you paid for is still there on the next trip. At the same headline price that is 25 to 40 percent more usable data, and in India it means the effective cost is nearer $0.00 a gigabyte than $0.00.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for India is to buy slightly less than you think you need and top up if you run out. Topping up takes about ten seconds and does not involve installing anything. Buying too much is the expensive mistake everywhere else and merely a neutral one here.
Landing in India
Install before you fly, on your home wifi. The profile downloads while you still have a connection you trust, then sits dormant until you land in India and it attaches to Jio.
On landing there is one thing to check: data roaming has to be switched on for the Orbislo line. It is off by default on both iOS and Android, and it has nothing to do with roaming charges here, because the plan is prepaid and there is no bill to run up. Turn it on for the Orbislo line and leave it off for your home line, and your home number keeps working for calls and bank codes without costing anything.
One local thing worth knowing before you buy, which we put in the buy flow rather than in the terms: Local SIMs need an in person identity check with a passport and a photo. A roaming eSIM does not, which is the single biggest time saver for a visitor to India.
Coverage across India
The figures above cover India as a whole, and a national figure hides real variation. We publish separate figures for Delhi, Mumbai, Goa, Jaipur and Bengaluru, because the difference between a capital and a coastal town is usually larger than the difference between two countries.
Outside the cities, coverage follows the same pattern it does everywhere: the main roads and the tourist corridors are well served, and it thins in the mountains and on the water. No travel eSIM changes that, because it is the same physical network the local population uses. What a multi network profile changes is which of the available towers you get to use.
Getting a local SIM in India
A new mobile connection is issued only face to face. India's digital KYC rules require the customer to visit the operator's authorised point of sale with the original identity and address documents, where a live photograph of the customer and of those documents is captured at the counter.
What is restricted in India
- Satellite phones and GPS devices: Possessing or operating a satellite phone or a GPS device in India without a licence from the Department of Telecommunications is illegal, even for a traveller only transiting. The ban can reach handheld or cycling GPS units, and devices can be confiscated and their owners fined or arrested.
- SIM cards obtained by fraud or passed on: Obtaining an Indian SIM through fake documents, cheating or impersonation is a non-bailable offence carrying up to three years in prison, a fine of up to 50 lakh rupees, or both. A person who buys a SIM in their own name and gives it to someone who misuses it can also be treated as an offender.
- IMEI and caller ID tampering: Changing a phone's IMEI or spoofing a calling number is an offence under India's Telecommunications Act, 2023, punishable by up to three years in prison, a fine of up to 50 lakh rupees, or both.
- Mobile internet in Manipur: Internet services in parts of Manipur can be suspended at short notice, alongside curfews and transport disruption, after ethnic violence that broke out in 2023 and flared again between May and July 2025.
Worth knowing about India
- India's digital KYC process for new mobile connections also applies to foreign customers, and the additional safeguards that existing rules set for foreign and outstation customers must still be followed on top of the counter check.
- The Department of Telecommunications had to relax part of its KYC process in July 2024 because visitors could not complete it: the one time password that signs the form was being sent to an Indian alternate number a foreign national does not have, so operators may now send it to an email address instead.
- A Department of Telecommunications guideline lets BSNL sell pre-activated prepaid SIMs at its own airport counters to foreign nationals arriving on an e-Visa. Those SIMs may not stay valid longer than the e-Visa and need no local reference, and BSNL keeps a signed slip with a passport and e-Visa copy, or links the SIM to the e-Visa electronically.
- India's single emergency number is 112, which passes calls to police, health, fire and other services through a response centre in each state or union territory. It also takes reports by SMS, email, web request, chatbot and WhatsApp, not only voice calls.
- India is rolling out cell broadcast warnings. In February 2025 C-DOT and the National Disaster Management Authority agreed to deploy the system across all Indian networks, and C-DOT's platform has since been integrated with Airtel, BSNL, Jio and Vi, with more than 95 percent of the national network ready.
- Indian special tariff and combo recharge vouchers can now run for up to 365 days, up from a 90 day cap, and operators must offer a separate voucher covering voice and SMS only, for users who do not need data.
- India blocks lost and stolen handsets by IMEI through the Central Equipment Identity Register on the Sanchar Saathi portal and app. By late 2025 the scheme had traced 26.35 lakh lost or stolen handsets, returned 7.3 lakh to their owners and blocked 6.21 lakh IMEIs linked to fraud.
How India compares across Asia
- Regional typical speed
- 42.95 Mbps
- Upstream networks
- 2, Jio, Airtel
- 5G
- Yes, standalone
- Next fastest nearby
- Maldives, 47 Mbps
- Next slowest nearby
- Tajikistan, 43.9 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 5: Delhi, Mumbai, Goa, Jaipur, Bengaluru
