A connectivity company that also runs a room full of chairs

What we actually sell

The connectivity side is straightforward to describe and unglamorous to operate. We hold agreements with mobile network partners, and through them we issue eSIM profiles: cryptographically signed configurations delivered from an SM-DP+ server to the embedded UICC inside your phone. You scan a QR code or tap install in the app, the phone talks to that server over Wi-Fi, and a new data line appears in your settings. When you land, the profile attaches to whichever partner network serves that market.

What we do not do is pretend the resulting experience is uniform. Roaming quality is a function of the local site, the bands your handset supports, the hour of day and how loaded the cell is. A profile that runs beautifully in Lisbon can be mediocre in a valley two hundred kilometres north. So we publish partner names, supported technologies and known weak spots, and we refuse to advertise a throughput figure we cannot stand behind.

The community side is less technical and takes far more work. Chapters are run by members who genuinely live in the city, not by a marketing team dropping in for a launch week. Each chapter keeps a channel, a standing meeting slot and a short practical guide covering the things that are hard to search for: which bank will open an account for a foreigner, which neighbourhoods are quiet on a weekday, which coworking space has power sockets that actually reach the tables.

How the two halves connect

They connect because the failure modes overlap. Somebody whose data plan dies mid-call on a client project has an infrastructure problem. Somebody who has been heads-down in an apartment for six weeks has a different problem with the same symptom: work abroad stops being sustainable. Membership gives us a reason to keep talking to people after the transaction, and it gives members a reason to tell us the truth about coverage in their city — which is where most of our honest coverage notes come from.

It also shapes how we handle support. Because members are in every time zone, we run written support with a documented escalation path rather than a phone queue that is only awake in Central Time. Most activation problems are solved by a written checklist at two in the morning local time, not by a call.

How we work

• We describe constraints before benefits

  Every plan page names the plan shape, the validity behaviour, the tethering rules and the markets that require identity registration. If a plan is a poor fit for your trip, we would rather say so than take the order.

• We do not publish numbers we cannot defend

  No country counts that quietly include markets with a single flaky partner. No speed claims. No customer statistics. Where we describe scale, we describe it as capability — regions served, plan types offered, chapters running.

• Members control their own visibility

  The directory is opt-in field by field. Nothing is scraped from other platforms, nothing is sold to advertisers, and leaving the community removes your entry rather than archiving it somewhere.

• We write the documentation we wished existed

  Field Notes is not a content-marketing programme. It is where we put the explanations that took us three support tickets and a phone call with a partner to work out.