Canadian startup sells backup data for outages and travel

In light of today’s internet outage, the Canadian startup Sweat Free Telecom has come onto our radar since it sells pre-paid eSIM cards with data that doesn’t expire. In an email to MobileSyrup, Sweat Free founder Chanakya Ramdev described it best as “a spare tire for your phone.”

The data is usually quite pricey with a single gigabyte going for $50, but right now until the end of May that price is down to $16. You can get other plans ranging from 5GB to 100GB as well.

The highlight of this data is that it will work across multiple networks, and the basic plan includes roaming in the U.S. and Mexico. There are upgraded plans you can add roaming for even more countries if you travel to Europe or around the world often.

As I mentioned before, it also doesn’t expire, so you can use a little bit here and there for as many months or years as you need. Sweat Free Telecom has been around for 10 years but really pivoted to this data strategy after the large Rogers outage in 2022. 

While you could buy a pre-paid data eSIM from any carrier, the promise of being able to switch networks and travel with this one makes it a more enticing option. Ramdev explained that the data is more expensive than you’d traditionally because the company has deals with telecoms to ensure data does not expire.

“So [the customer] can use it now, 10 years from now or theoretically even a 1,000 years from now. We’ve done a special deal with a telco that allows our customers to keep their data forever, so that’s why the telco bills us more and we have to bill our customers accordingly,” Ramdev told MobileSyrup.

Modern phones allow you to have multiple eSIM cards loaded onto your phone so in practice you would still need a regular SIM card and plan from a tradional carrier, but then you would want to use this new one while travelling or you could only switch to it during outages.

Source: Sweat Free Telecom