No signal abroad

[domcaz1]

My sky esim works great in the uk, but now I've arrived in South Africa it is simply not connecting to a local network.

I have an iPhone 16 Pro running iOS 26.2

I've upped my spend cap to £5, tried to manually select a network (MTN and Vodacom), have turned the sim on and off many times and tried airplane mode many times...and rebooted the phone a few times.

Is there any way to kick the networks into life into letting me join? 

[caesarome]

@domcaz1 

Do you have roaming turned on via settings > mobile data service ?

[domcaz1]

No I dont have mobile data turned on as I dont want to use mobile data. I

only want to receive text messages and phone calls. I will not be using any data at all.