Using an eSIM in Johannesburg

What Johannesburg is like on a phone

People come to Johannesburg for specific reasons: a meeting, a connection, one night before heading north to a reserve. This is not a walking city but a driving one, and the distances between neighbourhoods are larger than photographs suggest, so the phone spends the day being a navigation system rather than a camera. In the business districts — Sandton, Rosebank — the line is steady enough to take a video call on. The real change comes when you leave the metro for the reserves, and that is a stretch worth planning as an offline one from the start.

When you land

International flights come into Terminal A at OR Tambo (JNB); domestic flights use Terminal B, and you can walk between them inside the building. Switch the eSIM on while the aircraft is still taxiing so you can check an onward gate and message whoever is collecting you before you reach immigration. The Gautrain station sits beside the terminal and runs into Sandton, which is where most visitors stay and where you change for the Pretoria line. On board the line works almost the whole way, with short drops in the tunnelled sections. If you are driving instead, set the route before you pull out of the parking level and put the phone in a mount rather than in your hand.

Where coverage changes

Across the metro — Sandton, Rosebank, the inner city, the outer suburbs — the line runs the way any large city's does, the cross-town freeways included. In the townships people visit on guided tours it behaves normally too. The difference starts on the highways heading north and west, where the gaps between towns stretch out and thin down. Inside a reserve or at a bush lodge there is often no service at all beyond the camp itself, and many lodges run on their own Wi-Fi instead, so plan a game drive as a fully offline stretch and tell people at home when to expect to hear from you. Scheduled electricity interruptions can at times affect equipment in an area as well, which is another reason to start the day with a full battery and a power bank in the bag.

What a day here costs in data

Almost every trip here happens in a car, so navigation is open for most of the day. An ordinary day of driving to meetings, stopping at a mall and going out for dinner tends to run about 1.5–2GB before you have watched a single video. When you are not driving yourself, a ride app handles it, and that means data at the booking, all the way through the trip and again at payment. If you are here to work, the video calls taken from the hotel or from the back of a car are the heaviest thing on the list. South Africa runs several hours behind Thailand, so calls home usually land in the local morning — leave some allowance for that part of the day.

Districts travellers ask about

• Sandton — The business district, with hotels, malls and the Gautrain station all within walking distance of each other, and enough signal to take a call from a lobby. The underground parking levels are where it reliably disappears, so order your ride while you are still upstairs.
• Rosebank — More genuinely walkable than most of the city, with a weekend market and galleries close together. The line works across the area, though a packed Sunday market can slow an app payment a little, so allow a moment at the stall.
• Braamfontein and Maboneng — Inner-city blocks where old buildings have become galleries, coffee shops and a Saturday market. The line behaves normally here. Walk, look at the art, and put the phone away when moving through a crowd — the same habit you would keep in any large city.
• Melville and Parkhurst — Restaurant and bar streets threaded through residential blocks, the kind of place people settle into for an evening. Coverage is good along the strips; in the old houses converted into restaurants, a table right at the back can read a little weaker than the pavement out front.

Day trips out of the city

• A guided tour of Soweto — Most people go with a local guide who takes in the former homes of the leaders, the museums and streets with a long history behind them. Along the main roads and at the stops the line works normally. If you will pay an entry fee through an app, get it ready in the vehicle before you step out.
• The Cradle of Humankind — The caves themselves have no service, which is true of every cave. The visitor centre above ground is fine. The roads out are rural and thin in patches, so load the route and save your tour time before leaving the city. Entry fees and tour slots change from year to year — check the official site rather than an old listing.
• Pilanesberg Game Reserve — Inside the reserve, treat the whole game drive as having no service. Camps and lodges typically rely on their own Wi-Fi instead. Download the route map and your booking beforehand, tell people at home you will be back in touch in the evening, and start with a full battery, because the camera works hard all day.