Using an eSIM in Casablanca

What Casablanca is like on a phone

Casablanca is less a postcard city than a working one: people come here for meetings, for a connection, for the train that takes them on to Marrakech or Tangier. Plenty of visitors land, stay a night or two, and move on. Through the business district, along the seafront and around the Hassan II Mosque the line behaves like any large city line — steady enough to leave maps running all day. The oddity here is not weak signal but position: inside the old medina, thick walls and narrow lanes make the phone guess where you are rather than know.

À l'atterrissage

International flights arrive at Mohammed V (CMN), where Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 sit side by side and are joined by a walkway inside. Switch the eSIM line on as the plane touches down — passport queues here can be slow, and it is worth being able to tell whoever is meeting you that you are running behind. A rail station sits directly beneath the terminals, with trains into Casa-Voyageurs and Casa-Port, which is how most locals do the trip. On the ride in, the line dips across the open ground and industrial belt outside the city, then firms up as the suburbs close in. If you are taking a car instead, save your hotel address in French or Arabic before you leave the terminal, because an English spelling of a street name does not always return a result.

Où la couverture change

Along the Atlantic corniche at Ain Diab and around the Hassan II Mosque the line holds without drama, including out on the open plaza where the wind makes you hold the phone with both hands. In the old medina and the Habous quarter the problem is accuracy rather than strength: under the covered lanes the blue dot hops from one alley to the next, so it pays to remember the name of the gate you came in by instead of trusting the arrow on screen. Head out of town on the coast road south, or on the inland highway, and the line thins between villages before filling in again at the next town. If a long drive is on the plan, download that map area while you are still in the city and treat the stretches in between as offline.

What a day here costs in data

A walking day here — maps open, menus translated, a haggle in the market, photos sent home — usually lands around 1–1.5GB. Take a rental car down the coast with navigation running for hours and the number climbs, because every change of plan makes the map fetch a fresh route. The app that works hardest in Casablanca is the translator: Arabic signage, a taxi driver's directions, the label on something in a shop. Pointing the camera at text to translate it live costs noticeably more than typing a phrase in. Morocco runs several hours behind Thailand, so most people call home in the Moroccan morning and leave the long video uploads for the hotel Wi-Fi late at night.

Districts travellers ask about

• Ain Diab and the corniche — A run of beach clubs and restaurants where people settle in until well after dark. The line is good the length of the road, though uploads crawl on a busy weekend evening when the whole strip is posting at once. The clip goes up far more smoothly back at the hotel.
• The old medina and the Hassan II Mosque — The plaza in front of the mosque is wide open to the sea and perfectly comfortable to use. Step into the medina lanes behind it and your position on the map starts drifting. Drop a pin on the gate you entered by before you go in; finding your way out afterwards is much easier that way.
• The Habous quarter — The planned new medina, with bookshops, pastry counters and goldsmiths lined up under the arcades. Under the covered walkways the line softens a little without falling over. If you intend to pay through an app, open the payment screen while you are still out in the open square.
• Maarif and the downtown — Shops, offices and cafes where people genuinely sit and work, with enough signal to run a hotspot for a laptop. In the older Art Deco blocks downtown the walls are thick, so a ground-floor lobby can read weaker than the street outside it.

Day trips out of the city

• Rabat — Reached by a direct train from the central station. The signal comes and goes across the open country in between and settles again as you pull into town. In the riverside kasbah and around the royal mausoleum it behaves normally. Buy or save your ticket to the phone before you board rather than at the platform.
• El Jadida — A walled seaside town whose highlight is a Portuguese-era underground cistern — and underground means no signal at all, which is entirely normal. Up on the ramparts and around the harbour it is fine. The coast road out here thins between villages, so load the route before you set off.
• Marrakech — Most people take the train, and the run crosses long open plains where the line alternates between weak and solid the whole way. Once there, the medina plays the same trick with your position as Casablanca does, only more so. Save the name and phone number of your riad in advance rather than searching for it on arrival.