Morocco Travel eSIM

The country stopped selling anonymous prepaid lines in 2014, when the telecoms regulator required every buyer to be identified before a card could be activated. For a foreigner that means the passport, in person, with the name and document number written into the record. A card that was not registered properly can simply be switched off later, which is why the shop cares more about the paperwork than you do.

The arrival experience is one of the better ones in the region. The three operators keep kiosks in the arrivals halls of the main airports, the queue moves, and the whole thing is a few minutes of someone photographing your passport page and typing. Expect to be photographed yourself at some counters; it is part of how the identification is recorded.

These plans roam onto the local networks and break out on a European one, so a Moroccan site or app that checks where you are connecting from sees a European address rather than a local one. Banking, government portals and anything geo-restricted to the country are where that shows up. Nothing about it is concealment, and we would rather you knew before buying than found out at a login screen.

Geography is the part people underestimate. The coast, the imperial cities and the motorway spine are well served, and the interior is a different country technically as well as scenically. On the High Atlas passes, in the gorges, on the pistes south of the mountains and in the deep Rif, coverage follows the road and sometimes not even that. Download the offline map before the switchbacks, not after.

The case for a local line: months rather than weeks, a Moroccan number for a delivery or a landlord, or a trip built around places where you would rather have the network the locals have. For a week between Marrakech, the coast and a couple of desert nights, this is the version that is working before you reach the taxi rank.