Forum Discussion
Living abroad for a year
Our daughter will be studying in England this school year. Does anyone know what our options are for her phone service? Should we just get her a sim card over there?
If it’s for a year I would get a local one since the Tmobile plans aren’t designed for long term international roaming.
Their prepaid over there, especially from Vodafone, has some exceptional rates, even when calling to North America. If she is going to use WiFi Calling almost 100% of the time though, then she might be okay with extended roaming.
Unless her phone is on some exceptional plan (e.g. free line) I'd suggest porting her number to Google Voice and getting a local SIM in UK. Of course, her phone has to be unlocked for this to work. She can install the Google Voice App on her phone and continue to make and receive calls from the US number.
If she needs to keep that line active on T-Mobile @syaoran's suggestion might work. Also, if she ever gets any warning text about excess roaming she can mail her T-Mobile SIM home where you can download a couple of hundred GB of cellular data to reset the counter and mail it back to her.
Interesting thread on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/wwfd97/is_a_warning_given_before_you_get_removed_for/
I have never seen the warning and there has been a couple of times I have been out of the country for more than 6 months. When roaming though, I use WiFi Calling as much as I can. Having a few dual-SIM phones, I use a second SIM for data unless I need the US VPN for certain things.
Our daughter is doing the same @laureleby! I'm wondering the same, and our daughter is trying very much to keep her US number (and avoid having a 2nd phone if possible). Thanks for your suggestion @drnewcomb. Won't getting a UK SIM card still disable her US number? I guess I'm not sure how once she installs a UK SIM card, her previous US phone number will still work.
