Install on iPhone, in about a minute.

The six steps, in order

1. Buy before you fly. Order on wifi at home. The profile is issued to your account in seconds, and if provisioning fails you are refunded automatically inside 60 seconds without asking anyone.
2. Tap Install. In the Orbislo app or in the order email, tap Install eSIM. On iOS 17.4 and later this opens Apple's own eSIM install sheet directly. There is no QR code to scan and no second device involved.
3. Confirm in Apple's sheet. iOS shows you the plan and asks you to confirm. Tap Continue, then Done. The profile is written to the eSIM chip already inside your iPhone.
4. Label the line. iOS asks what to call it. Call it Orbislo. Choose your home line for Default Voice so calls and texts keep arriving on your usual number.
5. Set Cellular Data to Orbislo. Settings, Cellular, Cellular Data, and pick the Orbislo line. Then turn off Allow Cellular Data Switching so your iPhone cannot fall back to your home carrier, and bill you for roaming, without telling you.
6. Turn on Data Roaming. Settings, Cellular, tap the Orbislo line under SIMs, then turn on Data Roaming. This is the step people skip, and it is the first thing to check when you land with no service.

The Data Roaming toggle, which is the whole ballgame

It reads wrong, and that is why people leave it off. You are in Tokyo, on a Japanese network, and the phone is asking you to allow roaming. Here is the mechanism. Your Orbislo profile is not a Japanese consumer profile. It is a profile that attaches to KDDI or NTT Docomo under a wholesale agreement, and to iOS every one of those attachments is a roaming attachment. The classification is about who issued the profile, not about where your feet are. So the toggle is on the wrong side of the fence by default, and only you can move it.

Turning it on cannot cost you money on the Orbislo line. The plan is prepaid, the balance is in your wallet, and there is no home carrier anywhere in the chain that could raise an invoice. The charge people are afraid of comes from their home line, which is a separate switch on a separate SIM, and which you should leave exactly as it is.

Do this before you fly, on wifi, at the same time you install. It is much easier to find a settings screen in your own kitchen than in an arrivals hall with 400 other people and no connection.

Keeping your own number while Orbislo carries the data

An iPhone runs two lines at once, so nothing has to be given up. Leave your home line installed and set as Default Voice. Calls and texts to your usual number keep arriving, including your bank codes, as long as your home carrier lets you receive texts abroad. Point Cellular Data at Orbislo and every byte of browsing, maps and messaging goes over the plan you paid a few dollars for instead of the one that charges by the megabyte.

Then turn off Allow Cellular Data Switching, in Settings, Cellular, Cellular Data. That setting exists so your iPhone can borrow the other line when the primary one is weak. At home it is helpful. Abroad it is the mechanism behind almost every surprise roaming bill a traveller sends us a screenshot of, because the phone borrowed the home line for eleven minutes in a tunnel and the home carrier charged for the privilege.

If it says No Service

Work down that table in order and stop at the first thing that changes. If you reach the bottom and are still dark, open the app and ask Ori, which shows the reconnect steps saved on your phone even with no signal, or message a human. Your diagnostics are attached to the conversation before you type anything, so nobody asks you to describe your settings screen down a chat window.

Installing early, and the stored profile problem

Install now, not at the gate. Installing writes the profile. Activating happens the first time that profile attaches to a network in the destination country, which is normally about 90 seconds after you turn airplane mode off on the tarmac. Nothing is spent in between, so an install three weeks early costs the same as an install three minutes early and is far less stressful.

After the trip, keep the line while it is valid. A modern iPhone stores 8 or more eSIM profiles but runs only two lines at a time, so it pays to collect as few as possible. Orbislo issues one line per destination, or a regional line that also covers the neighbours, so most of Europe runs on a single line. While a line is valid, every refill lands on it automatically, so topping up never adds a profile. Data loaded on a line and not used goes back to your balance when the line closes, and a closed line can be deleted from Settings to free the slot. Read the full mechanism on the lines page, or go straight to the store and pick where you are going.