Written by the NXTL team. We make a travel eSIM, which we mention in a few places below as one option among several. The rest of the checklist applies whatever connection you use.

Working from a new country is great until your laptop is on hotel Wi-Fi that drops every twenty minutes, and you're 4 GB into a Docker pull on a mobile plan you didn't size. Here's the checklist we use: what to sort out before you fly, and how to keep your data use predictable once you land.

1. Treat your phone as your primary uplink, not a backup

Hotel, café and coworking Wi-Fi varies a lot. A mobile hotspot from your own phone is often the most consistent connection you have, and you control it.

• Test tethering before you travel. Turn on Personal Hotspot (iOS) or Wi-Fi hotspot (Android), connect your laptop and run a real task: git fetch, a short video call. Some plans and profiles limit tethering, so find out at home.
• Use USB tethering when you can. It's usually steadier than Wi-Fi tethering and charges the phone at the same time. Bluetooth tethering works, but it's slow.
• Watch battery and heat. Running a hotspot for long stretches drains the battery fast. Carry a power bank and a short cable.
• Mark the hotspot as metered on your laptop. Windows and macOS will both cut back on background downloads over a connection they know is limited (more on this below).

2. Check eSIM compatibility properly

An eSIM lets you add a local or travel data plan without hunting for a SIM shop at arrival. Before you rely on one, check that:

1. Your phone supports eSIM. Many recent phones do, but regional models vary.
2. Your phone is carrier-unlocked. A locked phone may reject third-party eSIM profiles.
3. You install the eSIM before you leave, on reliable Wi-Fi. Installation needs a connection, and you won't want to be doing it at an airport gate.
4. You know how to switch data lines. Keep your home SIM active for calls and texts if you need them, and set mobile data to the travel eSIM. Turn off data roaming on the home line to avoid surprise charges.

Most eSIM providers publish a device list. NXTL's is at the eSIM compatible devices page, and it's a quick way to check your model even if you end up choosing someone else.

3. Budget data for developer workloads

This is where remote developers get caught out. Ordinary browsing is cheap. Development work isn't. The figures below are rough and vary with project size, codec and settings, so use them for planning and then measure your own usage (section 4).

Practical rules:

• Prefetch on good Wi-Fi. Pull images, clone repos and run installs the night before you switch to mobile data.
• Shallow and partial clones are the biggest single saving for git: git clone --filter=blob:none <url> fetches file contents only when you need them.
• Keep package caches warm. npm, pip, Cargo and Go all cache locally. Don't wipe them before a trip.
• Push CI to the cloud. Let remote runners do heavy builds and pull only the artifacts you actually need.
• Use a remote dev box for heavy work. SSH or a remote editor session to a cloud machine moves only keystrokes and screen updates, while the big downloads happen in the data centre.

4. Measure your usage, don't guess

• On the phone: reset the cellular data counter when you arrive (iOS: Settings → Mobile Data; Android: Network & internet → Data usage). Check it daily for the first few days.
• On the laptop: tools like nettop (macOS), nethogs or vnstat (Linux), or Windows' Data Usage settings show which apps are using bandwidth. Background sync clients and update services are the usual culprits.
• Set metered connections: Windows (Wi-Fi properties → Metered connection) and macOS Sonoma or later (Low Data Mode for that network) both cut back on background traffic.
• Know how your plan bills. Fixed bundles can run out or expire mid-trip, while pay-as-you-go plans only charge for what you use. Either works if you understand it.

5. VPN notes

• Use a VPN on shared Wi-Fi if your company requires it or you're handling anything sensitive. Expect a little overhead in data and latency.
• Know where your traffic exits. Some travel eSIMs route traffic through a fixed region, so websites may see an IP from a different country than the one you're in. That affects geo-based content, login checks and occasionally CAPTCHAs. With NXTL, for example, consumer traffic exits via London, which is explained on the global routing page.
• Tell your security team before you travel. Logins from unexpected countries can trigger account locks. Allow-list or pre-announce your travel.
• Split tunnelling can keep big public downloads (package registries, for example) off the corporate VPN, if your policy allows it.

6. Have backup connectivity

Plan for at least two independent ways online:

1. Primary: a phone hotspot on a local SIM or travel eSIM.
2. Secondary: coworking or accommodation Wi-Fi you've actually tested, not just read about in a review.
3. Tertiary: a second data line, on a different network if possible, so one outage doesn't take everything down.

One way to set up a reusable data line is a pay-as-you-go travel eSIM. NXTL Global eSIM is a data-only eSIM covering 180+ countries and 460+ networks. Usage comes out of a prepaid balance and is billed in 1 KB increments, so you aren't buying a bundle per country. On the web it starts at US$11.99, which is US$10 of usable balance plus US$1.99 for the eSIM (in-app prices may differ). Unused standard balance doesn't expire while your account stays active, subject to the terms. Coverage and speed depend on the local network, as with any provider, so compare it against local SIMs and other options for your route.

Also pack: offline docs (DevDocs offline, man pages, downloaded dependency docs), a written list of your critical passwords and 2FA backup codes stored securely offline, and a plan for what you'll do if you're offline for a day.

The short version

• Test hotspot and tethering at home.
• Confirm eSIM support and carrier unlock, and install before departure.
• Prefetch repos, images and packages on Wi-Fi.
• Mark mobile connections as metered and pause sync and updates.
• Measure daily usage for the first few days.
• Know where your VPN and eSIM traffic exits.
• Keep two independent backups.

With a bit of setup beforehand, being in a new country stops being a connectivity problem and you can just get on with work.