Some travel products try to replace your phone number entirely. We don't, and it's not an oversight - it's the design. Your number is attached to your bank, your accounts, and everyone who already knows how to reach you. Replacing it for a fortnight abroad would solve a small problem by creating a much larger one.
Think about how many places your number already lives: your bank's fraud checks, your delivery notifications, the friend who only ever texts rather than messages. Swapping it out for a trip means updating all of that twice, and hoping nothing important lands on the wrong number in between.
Two lines, one phone
Once your eSIM is installed alongside your existing SIM, you're carrying two lines: the one you've always had, and a second one dedicated to data. Neither replaces the other. Your home line keeps its number, its call history, and its relationship with your bank. The travel line exists purely to carry data, at destination pricing, without touching your existing number at all.
This is a genuinely different model from an old-fashioned travel SIM, which asked you to give up your number for the length of the trip in exchange for cheaper local rates. Two lines side by side means you never have to choose between the two.
What your number is for
Your phone number is the one thing that shouldn't change mid-trip. It's how your bank sends two-factor codes, how family reaches you in an emergency, and how anyone with your number in their contacts already expects to find you. We keep it exactly where it is, active on your home SIM the entire time you're travelling, so nothing about how people reach you changes.
That includes the quiet, unglamorous stuff too - delivery couriers, appointment reminders, the odd verification text from a service you signed up for years ago and forgot about. All of it keeps landing on the number it's always landed on.