Peter Basil

I’m Peter, the founder of BazTel. I built this company at the intersection of two things I know well: finance and travel.

Before starting BazTel, I worked in investment analytics at State Street, one of the world’s largest custodian banks, and later at TCorp, the New South Wales Government’s investment fund.

I hold a Bachelor of Mathematics and Finance (Honours) from the University of Technology, Sydney, an MBA from Macquarie University, and the CIPM designation from the CFA Institute. That background gives me a way of looking at the telecom industry that comes from investment research, not just personal frustration with roaming charges.

I’ve travelled to more than 70 countries across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and I’ve lived abroad in both Hong Kong and Singapore. Along the way I’ve tested eSIMs and physical SIM cards from dozens of providers — in major cities and in places with patchy signal — and that hands-on testing directly shapes how I build BazTel’s product, including one-click installation with no QR code required.

I launched BazTel on 1 July 2024 to solve a problem I kept running into myself: finding reliable, affordable mobile data in a new country shouldn’t be this complicated. BazTel is a single-founder company, and I write every article on this blog myself, drawing on my own trips, my own SIM testing, and my finance and telecom research background.