BARCELONA — If you travel around the globe with a recent-model iPad, you need to know about AlwaysOnline Wireless. It can save your day. Here at Mobile World Congress, it saved our livestream showing off the LG G5 to thousands of eager readers.

The LTE models of the iPad mini 3, iPad mini 4, iPad Air 2, and iPad Pro all feature the "Apple SIM," a virtual SIM card that (unless it gets locked to AT&T) can be reconfigured to connect to different providers around the globe. If you're roaming with a U.S. iPad, your options are typically GigSky and AlwaysOnline. Only AlwaysOnline has LTE, which makes a huge difference in speed and ease of use.

GigSky's prices are reasonable: $25 gets you 400MB, and $50 gets you 3GB. But the company is stuck at 3G right now, and for livestreaming, that's a no go. AlwaysOnline, on the other hand, has LTE contracts in 45 countries, soon to be 50. The difference between 3G and LTE is striking, especially on uploads, which can be 10 times as fast.

AlwaysOnline also has really tiny amounts of data, if you need it, for tiny amounts of money. It'll sell you 15MB, enough for a few emails, for just 99 cents. 100MB costs $5.99, as opposed to $15 on GigSky. GigSky does offer cheaper data when you get to large volumes. AlwaysOnline's biggest bucket is $28.99 for 500MB, while GigSky will give you 800MB for $35 and 3GB for $50. But I couldn't have livestreamed over 3G.

Here at MWC, we're in a wireless swamp where the Wi-Fi is unreliable, and it's very difficult to find a good Ethernet connection. But, oddly, LTE is working brilliantly, at speeds very similar to the ones we saw in Ookla's database when we recommended Vodafone as the best carrier at MWC. (AlwaysOnline uses Movistar, which came in second place. It's still good.)

Yes, this is a very specific solution for very specific products. But if you live and die by your iPad, it could save your workday.

AlwaysOnline is one of the latest virtual operators from the fertile mind of Emir Aboulhosn, a Canadian entrepreneur who has made a business of finding niches to fit his little carriers into. His biggest success so far was Roam Mobility, a carrier designed for Canadians who occasionally travel over the border into the U.S.

Currently he's also working on Krew Mobile, a T-Mobile-based carrier for families. Krew sells you three lines with unlimited talk, text and 2GB of LTE data for $39/month. But two of those lines are "child lines," which have no data and can only be gifted with talk and text for 30 one-hour blocks per month. The three lines can text each other at any time, though.

AlwaysOnline is available in the Settings panel of your iPad. Go to the Settings Menu, press Cellular (or Mobile) Data, Set Up Cellular Data, and select it as your carrier.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.