Akariq response to a major eSIM service interruption

Summary

During a major service interruption affecting travel eSIM users, mobile data became unavailable or intermittent across several regions. Customers in the United States and European Union were impacted most heavily.

The incident window was 24 July, approximately 11:30 to 15:30 UTC. The disruption lasted approximately four hours, although the duration and severity varied by customer and location. This was not a uniform regional outage: some eSIMs continued working normally while others lost service or experienced repeated interruptions.

Akariq issued temporary backup eSIMs to affected travelers. For example, one traveler in Turkey received an unlimited-data eSIM for 24 hours, while one traveler in Italy received a Europe-wide eSIM to stay connected while the original service was unavailable.

The response restored connectivity for individual customers, but it was not yet fully automated. This post explains what happened, what we did, and what we are changing.

Customer impact

Customers reported losing mobile data completely or seeing service return briefly before failing again. Others in the same or nearby regions continued to connect normally. For a traveler, an outage can mean losing access to maps, boarding passes, hotel details, translation, banking, and support at the same time.

Airalo publicly acknowledged a temporary network issue affecting mobile data for some travelers in selected regions and advised customers not to delete or reinstall their eSIMs while the issue was being resolved. Airalo’s service interruption notice provides the provider’s own confirmation of the incident.

Public reports from Airalo customers described travelers in Türkiye, Iceland, Greece, Portugal, Bulgaria, and other destinations dealing with the disruption. Some reports described more than two hours without service, while others reported service stopping after working normally earlier in the trip. These accounts are not a complete measurement of the incident, but they capture the uncertainty customers faced while waiting for updates: Türkiye, Iceland, Greece, Portugal, and Bulgaria.

We do not operate the upstream networks involved in the interruption and cannot claim a root cause for the provider-side failure. Our responsibility was the part we could control: helping Akariq customers stay connected.

Response

We used our available backup eSIM resources to provide temporary connectivity based on the customer’s location and immediate needs.

The response process was:

1. Identify customers whose connectivity was affected.
2. Confirm the travel destination and available coverage options.
3. Select a suitable backup eSIM.
4. Issue the backup and send installation instructions.
5. Monitor the original service and the customer’s ability to reconnect.

The replacement was not a permanent substitute for the original eSIM. It was a continuity measure while the original service was unavailable.

What worked

Our backup resources gave the team options beyond asking customers to repeat standard troubleshooting steps. In individual cases, we could match a temporary plan to the traveler’s location:

At the time of the incident, approximately 80% of the work to build those backup resources was already complete. That preparation meant some Akariq customers in affected regions had alternative coverage available and did not notice the upstream disruption at all.

• For example, a short unlimited plan was suitable for a traveler who needed immediate coverage in Turkey.
• A Europe-wide plan was suitable for a traveler moving through Italy and the surrounding region.

The team could issue these plans without asking customers to buy another eSIM during an already stressful journey.

What did not work well

The response was semi-automated. Incident detection, customer identification, plan selection, and reissuance still required manual decisions.

That approach allowed us to handle individual cases carefully, but it does not scale well. During a large incident, the time between a service failure and a usable backup matters. Customers should not need to find a support thread, explain the same outage, and wait for a manual intervention before receiving help.

Resolution

Issuing a backup eSIM did not mean the incident was resolved. The backup was temporary.

For an affected customer, the incident was resolved only when the original eSIM was back online and working again. Customers could keep the original eSIM installed while using the backup, then return to the original connection after service was restored.

Corrective actions

We are working towards a proactive response that can begin as soon as an incident is detected:

• detect regional or provider-level service interruptions
• identify affected active eSIMs and customers
• select a backup based on destination and coverage
• issue the temporary eSIM automatically
• send installation instructions immediately
• monitor the original eSIM until it is working again
• close the incident only after recovery is confirmed

Automation will include safety checks. A single customer’s connection failure is not enough to declare a provider incident, and a backup plan must be appropriate for the destination. The aim is not to send a replacement to everyone indiscriminately. The aim is to shorten the path from a confirmed incident to a working connection for the customers who need it.

Closing

We cannot prevent every upstream network failure. We can make sure that a failure does not leave a traveler without options.

The backup eSIM response helped affected customers stay connected during this incident. The Turkey and Italy cases described above are examples of how that response worked in practice. The next step is to make it faster, more consistent, and less dependent on manual work.

That is the standard we are holding ourselves to: when a customer’s connection fails, Akariq should be working on the backup before the customer has to ask.