When we think about traveling and roaming, our minds usually drift to leisure. We picture someone sharing a stunning photo of a temple in Japan, a sunset in Croatia, or a road trip across the US. It’s about sharing moments.
But there is another side to travel that is far more demanding: business travel.
In a hyper-connected world, business still relies heavily on human trust. We need to look each other in the eye, shake hands, and build relationships in person. And when you are traveling for the sake of an entire organization, there is no room for failure. Connectivity isn’t a “nice-to-have” option to send a photo home; it is a mandatory tool for productivity.
In this episode of eSIM Talks, Rafael Junqueira sits down with two experts who are redefining how we think about corporate mobility: Nitin Bhas, Chief of Strategy and Insights at Kaleido Intelligence, and Ricardo Rodriguez, Head of B2B Sales at Holafly. Together, they unpack how business connectivity has evolved from a chaotic administrative headache into a seamless, invisible layer of enterprise security and productivity.
From the “Roaming Box” to Magic in the Air
To understand where we are going, we first have to look at where we came from. Rafael kicks off the conversation with a brilliant trip down memory lane: twenty years ago, connecting abroad was so expensive that travelers simply ignored it.
Rafael recalls traveling with a physical “roaming box”, a device he had to physically plug into a hotel room’s ethernet port just to make free internet calls.
Fast forward to today, and the experience feels like magic. You land, switch on your phone, and you are instantly connected. But behind this “magic” lies a massive shift in how companies manage their workforces.
Nitin points out that even ten years ago, connectivity was treated as a lagging corporate expense. An employee would travel, deal with high roaming charges or struggle with local plastic SIM cards, and the company would only see the financial damage weeks later through an expense report.
Today, that model is dead. The border between personal and business travel is blurring (hello, “bleisure” and workations), and connectivity has become an invisible infrastructure.
The Illusion of Autonomy: Why Self-Management Fails
One of the most fascinating points Nitin brings to the table is a shift in data. For the first time, the percentage of employees who have to manually reimburse their travel connectivity after a trip has dropped below 10%.
But despite this progress, many companies still rely on a reactive approach, expecting employees to solve their own connection issues once they land.
Nitin warns that this “self-managed” approach is actually a form of employer neglect. According to Kaleido’s research, regions with the highest rate of self-managed connectivity, like Latin America and Oceania, also report the highest levels of employee stress and the lowest productivity.
When an employee connects to an unmanaged public Wi-Fi network at an airport or a café, they aren’t just trying to work; they are exposing the company to severe information security risks.
For research-heavy or data-sensitive companies, leaving connectivity outside the corporate umbrella is no longer just a minor inconvenience, it is a major compliance threat.
The “Always-On” Subscription: Changing the B2B Playbook
This is where the technology behind the eSIM changes the game entirely. As Ricardo explains, we need to stop thinking about eSIMs as single-use, disposable products that travelers download, use once, and forget on their devices.
Instead, the future lies in a permanent, subscription-style profile, or what Holafly calls the “Always-On” model.
“Think of it like Netflix,” Ricardo says. “You have a single profile permanently installed on your phone. When you travel to any of our 160+ destinations, the connection is instantly activated, and the company is only billed for what is needed. No administrative friction, no downloading multiple profiles, and absolute peace of mind.”
This shift completely rewrites the financial playbook for IT and finance managers. Traditional roaming is usage-based, leading to unpredictable “bill shocks” at the end of the month. By moving to a centralized, flat-rate platform like the Holafly Business Center, companies gain 100% budget predictability before anyone even boards a plane.
Integrations and the Football Analogy
As the conversation looks toward the next five years, both Nitin and Ricardo agree that the real battleground isn’t the eSIM itself, but the software ecosystem running behind it.
We are moving toward a highly automated ecosystem where connectivity is integrated into corporate travel management tools (like TravelPerk) via APIs, and managed centrally through Mobile Device Management (MDM) systems. Booking a flight will automatically provision the employee’s permanent eSIM for that specific destination.
To bring this complex ecosystem to life, Ricardo shares a perfect analogy using one of Holafly’s most active B2B client segments: professional football teams.
When a national federation travels for a tournament like the World Cup, they aren’t just moving players. They are managing a massive, diverse organization with completely different profiles:
- The Players need high-speed connectivity for the duration of the tournament to stay connected with their families.
- The Board of Directors might only fly in for the final week, requiring a short-term premium profile.
- The Scouts travel globally all year round, requiring a permanent, multi-country eSIM.
Managing this chaos manually is impossible. But with a centralized digital dashboard, a single travel manager can assign, reassign, and track all these profiles in real time, with zero waste and full cost control.
The Takeaway: Proactive over Reactive
As Rafael wraps up the episode, the message for modern businesses is clear: global mobility is no longer an afterthought.
The companies that will successfully navigate the future of hybrid and borderless work are those that stop treating roaming as a personal traveler issue. By adopting a proactive, digital-first approach, where secure, unlimited connectivity is waiting for the employee before they even pack their bags, enterprises can protect their data, boost productivity, and turn business travel into a truly seamless experience.
