Introducing Popcorn: A global phone plan with no roaming fees

Credit cards work abroad. Email follows you. Uber knows what country you're in before you do. Music streams, Wi-Fi connects, ATMs hand out cash in European capitals and tiny beach towns alike.

But touch down in an international airport, and be prepared to decode roaming packages, track data usage and wonder whether answering a call will cost $12. A travel eSIM for data is nice, but it's not a solution when you need to hold onto your old SIM for bank texts and need to be reachable for important calls. Phones were designed to keep us connected, but phone plans are holding us back.

We started Popcorn with a simple belief: that your phone plan should work like everything else already does. Wherever you are, wherever you want to go.

What is Popcorn?

Popcorn is a full US phone plan built to work everywhere. You get a real US phone number for calls, texts and verification codes, plus unlimited talk, text and data across more than 180 countries. For $69 per month, including taxes, that means no roaming fees or international day passes. Just one simple fee.

Most phone plans are domestic products that allow users to add international roaming for a price. But that doesn’t align with how many of us live today.

Popcorn is for people whose lives cross borders and want a phone plan that travels with them. From Brazilian beaches to French bistros, Popcorn keeps up with our users—no hidden fees, nothing lost in translation.

Why phones still don't travel well

The telecom industry was built country by country. Despite the illusion of a global network, it remains bound by rigid borders. Each carrier owns or accesses a domestic network, then negotiates temporary access when its customers travel beyond its limits. That short-term access is what you know as “roaming”: sometimes available, sometimes capped to limit data usage and often slow and expensive.

While our lives have become increasingly global, the industry has struggled to keep up. It has tried to make roaming more straightforward. Companies now sell travel eSIMS that have made it easier to buy data abroad, no finicky plastic SIM card required. But neither of those workarounds solves the fundamental problem: You travel. Your phone should too.

How Popcorn works

Getting started is simple.

1) Sign up and create an account
2) Download the app and install your eSIM
3) Port in your existing number, or get a new one

That's it. The whole process takes around five minutes, and you can activate it from anywhere in the world. You do not need to be physically present in the US. We like to think of it as our truly global entry.

Once you're live, your eSIM automatically connects to supported networks as you move between countries. Your number stays the same. You don't need to buy anything when you land or remember to turn roaming passes on and off.

There is a 7 day free trial, so you can make sure Popcorn works for you before committing.

If it's so easy, why has no one done it?

Keeping Popcorn simple to use relies on a sprawling and complex system of infrastructure and relationships that we've built from the ground up.

Behind a single eSIM sits a web of mobile networks, international carrier relationships, call routing, number provisioning and authentication systems. Calls and texts need to reach the same number wherever you are. Data needs to move across networks in an instant. Bank messages and verification codes need to arrive reliably and on time. Popcorn ensures that all of that happens in one service. Our aim is to make the coordination and technology that power it almost invisible.

We have spent years investing in the carrier infrastructure, software and partnerships required to make a global phone plan feel inevitable. You land, your phone works – that’s it.

Who is Popcorn for?

Popcorn is for people who feel at home in the world.

The American living in Europe who still needs a US number for banking. The founder moving between London and San Francisco. The family spread across several continents. The frequent traveler tired of activating a new data package before every flight.

Traditional carriers often impose visa-like limits on how long a plan can remain active abroad. Unlike these, Popcorn has no 90-day international cutoff. We designed it for digital natives, not tourists.

We work with partners around the world to keep Popcorn's network active and seamless. Understanding that not every network in every country is perfect, we have also invested in powerful technology to help our users stay connected even when local service falters.
Each plan also includes a backup eSIM, which can connect to additional networks in the US and around the world, plus an in-app dialer for those rare moments when a local roaming network has trouble completing a call.

Can a phone plan do more than connect calls?

Every Popcorn plan includes an optional AI Assistant at no extra cost. It can screen incoming calls and block spam. You choose which calls it answers, and you can pause it any time.

Today, Assistant lives inside the Popcorn app. Over time, it will become more deeply integrated into the native calling experience and take on more of the work that still makes phone calls frustrating: waiting on hold, dealing with spam, calling businesses and helping across languages. Popcorn connects. Our AI Assistant coordinates.

Popcorn isn't a better roaming plan

We didn't start Popcorn to tinker on the margins. We aren't interested in making roaming slightly cheaper or international passes a little more intuitive. We started it because we wanted to create a phone plan that understands how we move and collapses the distinction between "domestic" and "international."

Popcorn is a global phone plan for $69 per month, including taxes. You get a real US number, unlimited talk, text and data across more than 180 countries, a backup eSIM and an optional AI Assistant.

But the idea is much simpler than the feature list: one phone plan, for wherever life takes you.