A crew on a multi-country shoot sends a lot more than messages: call sheets, rushes, location photos, video calls with the office. Data that stops at a border costs a morning. The choice that matters is made before anyone flies: one plan for the whole route, or a separate trip for each leg.
Regional plan: one eSIM for the whole route
When every stop is in the same region, a regional plan covers them all on one eSIM. The plan list shows how many countries each regional plan covers; check every country on the itinerary against it, including the ones you only drive through.
The advantage is simplicity: each crew member installs once, and the line keeps working across borders. The trade-off is that a regional plan can cost more per gigabyte than a single-country one.
A trip per leg: the right plan for each country
When the route crosses regions, or one country is much longer than the rest, create a trip for each leg with that country's plan. Each crew member then has one eSIM per leg and switches lines at the border. It takes a minute on the phone, and the install board for each trip shows who has done it.
How much data a crew uses
Crew who upload rushes over mobile data use far more than anyone else, often several gigabytes a day, so plan them onto the largest daily allowance or send footage over hotel connections. Everyone else sits closer to 500 MB to 1 GB a day with navigation and video calls.
Where a coordinator helps
A coverage plan session before departure is a coordinator reviewing the itinerary, the plan and any phones the crew has raised, and replying in writing. On a route with five borders, that review is cheaper than finding a gap on day three. An on-call window covers the travel day itself.