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The problem your customers haven't mentioned
One of your customers moves a sales manager to Madrid. She takes her UK phone with her, because that's what everyone does. Three months later the roaming bill lands, finance asks questions, and someone gets told to "sort it out".
What nobody does is call their reseller. They don't think of it as a mobile problem you can solve. They think of it as the cost of having people abroad.
That's the opportunity. The spend is already happening in your accounts. It's just not happening through you.
Roaming is a workaround, not a solution
Roaming was built for the occasional trip. A UK SIM borrows access to a foreign network, and the home operator charges for the privilege. Bundles and day passes have softened that, but the basic deal hasn't changed: you're a visitor, and you pay like one.
A genuine local SIM works differently. Your customer’s employee gets:
- An in-country number, so local contacts see a local caller
- Native access to the local carrier's network, not a borrowed connection
- The same plan a resident would get, at local rates
For someone on a week-long trip, roaming is fine. For someone working in another country for months, travelling there every few weeks or based there permanently, it's the wrong tool. A local SIM is the right one.
What your customers stop dealing with
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Roaming and out-of-bundle charges nobody can predict | A local plan with a known monthly cost |
| A separate contract and invoice for every foreign operator | One supplier and one bill, through you |
| Staff buying their own SIMs abroad, with no oversight | Every connection managed centrally, alongside their UK estate |
| In-country ID checks and paperwork for each relocation | SIMs sorted before the employee lands |
| Calls ignored because a UK number looks like spam | A local number people actually pick up |
What a local number fixes that roaming can't
Cost is the obvious win. But the bigger difference is what a local number lets people do.
People answer it. A +44 number calling a Spanish client looks foreign at best and like spam at worst. A Spanish number looks like someone local doing business locally. For sales and service roles, that's the difference between a conversation and a missed call.
It passes local verification. This one gets overlooked. Banks, tax offices, utilities and government portals often send two-factor codes only to an in-country number. Anyone relocating needs one to open an account, rent a flat or register with local services. Without it, simple admin stalls for weeks.
It's ready before they go. The SIM or eSIM is set up before travel or deployment, so the employee is working from the moment they land. No hunting for a phone shop, no queue, no ID check in a language they don't speak yet.
Back to our sales manager in Madrid. With a local SIM she has a Spanish number and a Spanish plan from day one. Clients pick up, her bank account gets opened, and finance never sees a surprise bill. Her employer didn't sign a new contract to make it happen.
What's in it for you
The usual objection to selling international mobile is that it sounds complicated. Different countries, different operators, different rules. SIMsmart takes that off your plate.
- One wholesale contract with Cellhire, covering every country you sell into
- One bill, in one currency, however many countries your customers are in
- No country-specific knowledge needed. We handle the local carriers, the different regulations per country, and the paperwork
The commercial case is just as simple. This is incremental, recurring revenue from accounts you already hold. You're not prospecting, pitching a new relationship or learning a new market. You're capturing spend that's currently going to foreign operators and roaming charges.
It also makes those customers stickier. Once you're managing your customers' people abroad as well as at home, you're much harder to replace. International customers tend to be the ones growing, and you'll be there as they do.
One partner’s customer hired a US-based CEO who travels regularly between the US and UK. We ported his US number with no downtime and added UK and European cover on an eSIM, for £70 a month in total. That was less than his previous out-of-bundle charges, and the reseller won all of the customer’s business.
Read the case study
Where your customers’ people are going
The demand is concentrated in markets you’ll recognise from your own accounts. Across our partners, the top destinations by connection are Ireland, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium and the USA. These are the places UK businesses most often send staff, open offices and build sales teams.
SIMsmart covers all of them on local carrier plans, with coverage across Europe and the US and a growing footprint in Asia and the rest of the world. Our operator relationships are direct, not resold, so your customers get the same plan a resident would.
Wholesale options at a glance
Three plan types cover almost every customer situation.
| Plan | Best for |
|---|---|
| Voice & Data | Local smartphone plans for permanent deployments and frequent travellers |
| Data only | Data devices, backup lines, or a separate data line alongside a UK number |
| PPM & Data | Flexible pay-per-minute for lower-usage or variable deployments |
Where to start: one question for your accounts
You don’t need a new pitch deck to get started. You need one question, asked at your next account review:
"Do you have anyone working abroad, travelling regularly, or based overseas?"
If the answer is yes, ask how they’re connected today and what it’s costing. Most customers won’t know the full figure, and that’s usually the start of the conversation. From there, we’ll help you scope the right plans and get the SIMs out.
If you’d like a fuller picture first, we run dedicated SIMsmart training for partners. It covers the proposition, where the opportunities usually sit in an account base, and how other partners are already using SIMsmart with their customers.
Start with the easy win
If your customers have people abroad, there's revenue in your base right now. Talk to us about SIMsmart and we'll show you how quickly you can start capturing it.
For a lot of our partners, SIMsmart is where the relationship begins. Behind it sits nearly 40 years of Cellhire experience across business mobile, IoT, satellite and events connectivity, ready when your customers need more.