Cheap phone plan with international service?
I am going to be living in France for the next year. I want to keep my US mobile phone number, and I would like it to be somewhat usable while I am out of the country, but I can't find an affordable way do set this up. I am hoping someone here has some more insight for me.
I am going to be buying a French mobile phone plan (most likely through Orange) that will cover my data usage, along with a local number for calls and texts. I already have either whatsapp or imessage set up for calls and texts to/from my family in the US. Ideally, I would like to have my US number on a second sim on my phone. I wouldn't need any roaming data for that sim, just calls and texts, and my actual usage will be very small.
Here are the solutions I have explored:
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Porting my number to Google Voice. This is probably the best solution, but I would like to avoid google if at all possible. This costs only $20 with no monthly fees. This would require me to use a separate app for this number. If possible, I would like to be able to use the iPhone system apps for calls and texts.
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Some MVNO with international roaming. So far the best I have seen is Ting mobile. It costs $0.30 per minute calls and $0.12 per outgoing text. This pricing would be perfect for my extremely low usage. However it requires a $10/month pay as you go plan which is more than I want to pay.
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IoT sims (although I am almost positive this won't work). These appear to be sms and data only, so for my usage they would be sms only. Telnyx is the service I found that actually supports esim (my phone has only esim). I am having trouble with the console, but I am trying to get an esim on my iphone. If this can work, it would be only $2/month plus usage, which would be perfect.
Are there any other possible solutions that I should look into?
Google Fi worked fine for me in France, Germany, Denmark. Maybe 5 minutes after landing at De Gaulle my phone put up a 'welcome to France!' splash screen and all good from there. No need to change sims, no ridiculous overages on calls, texts, or data. This was 2018 though, maybe things are different now.
They're not. I love Fi, and have traveled to/from Europe 1-2 times per year for the last few years.
OP, it's essentially free international roaming. Free data. Free texts. Free wifi calls. Non-wifi calling is the only thing that isn't free, costs per minute.
No SIM swapping or anything, it just works within a few minutes of landing. Great service everywhere I went, which was mostly in the French countryside.
No obligation to take me up on it, but if you're interested, I have a referral code that gives us both a $20 bill credit once you're signed up for a certain amount of days, I think 60 or 90?
I use the base unlimited plan when in the US, about $55/mo. Base unlimited doesn't include international roaming, so for the months when I'm travelling abroad, I'll switch to the ultimate unlimited just for that month. About $70/mo. Upgrading your plan is quick and easy in the Fi app, takes 30 seconds. Downgrading back to base ultimate is also easy, but happens at the end of the monthly billing cycle, rather than immediately like the upgrade does.
Also, with a Pixel, you can dual-SIM and simultaneously have two phone numbers on one device. Fi can use your eSIM with your US number, and you can use a physical SIM with a French number. It's super easy to correctly use whichever number you want, the phone asks which number you want to call from, depicts which number your sending/receiving texts from, you can pick which one to use for data.
I can't speak to living over there for a year on Fi, my trips have been 10-14 days. But, highly recommend, overall!
Edit: For your minimal use, Fi's basic pay-per-GB plan also supports international roaming, and is their cheapest plan. Just their mid tier plan, the basic unlimited, doesn't support international roaming. Given you likely don't need data, it would probably be a better fit for you.
Damn. I'm already on Fi with a Pixel and you sold me! Lol I honestly didn't know about the dual sim thing. I haven't traveled with it internationally yet. That's cool!
Yeah, it's pretty neat. You'll want to verify dual SIM compatibility, I've got a Pixel 8 Pro, not sure when in the Pixel line they added that. But it's pretty slick, definitely a well polished feature that probably few people use.
A cursory Google leads me to believe that Fi will suspend your data after 90 days abroad, but calls and texts continue to work fine. I can't verify one way or the other, but something to think about.
On a side note, I activated a Mint Mobile SIM in the US that I then left with my dad who lives in France full time. He prefers iPhone, and I didn't want to jump the hoops of setting up Fi on one of those. He only uses it for texts, namely bank verification texts, but he's had it over there for almost a year without any issues.
I’ve read online that FI is pretty strict about cutting you off if you don’t come back to the US, so I don’t think that’s an option for me on this trip. I used to use FI many years ago, and it’s a really nice service, although I wish they would price the data cheaper. Thanks for the info about Mint mobile sim though!
I think that'll be true of any US carrier. If you're just looking for voice/sms (which from your post seems like what you're principally interested in) it doesn't look like they cut that off.
Overall I think your best bet is Google Voice. Yes, it's Google, but that's the "price" of it being free. Companies that respect your data privacy are naturally going to charge more because they don't make money without you giving it to them.
https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6157794#zippy=%2Cinternational-roaming-policy%2Cwhat-you-need-to-know-about-the-international-roaming-policy
Yeah, it looks like you get a max of 90 days of data unless you are deployed there with the military or on official State department business. Good luck with your search, though!
I’ve used FI in the past, and I really like them, but they cut off your service if you are out of the US for too long. I don’t know what the exact threshold is, but I will be in France for at least 10 months, and that is definitely longer than they allow.
Also the pricing is decent compared to US phone plans, but it’s pretty abysmal compared to European plans. More precisely, US carriers cost way more than Europe carriers, so Google can undercut US carriers. For some perspective, Orange is supposed to be the best carrier in France (equivalent of US Verizon). They have a plan for 100gb/month at 22€. Exchange rate is roughly 1:1 right now, so that is only slightly more expensive than the FI with calls and texts only, no data usage.
Keep in mind that even if a carrier offers international roaming they’ll probably kick you off if you’re roaming 100% of the time.
T-Mobile will start hounding you after 3 months where international data was more than 50% of your data usage.
I didn’t want to lose my US number when I left the country. I did the Google Voice route. It was cheap and works fine (💥🪵). Calls get routed through my phone as if originating locally, and texts come through the voice app. For those people who use iOS, imessage is unaffected, and I still text them through imessage albeit with my local number.
However, outgoing calls are impossible to make, and I have to end up using skype to figure that out, which can cause its own issues.
My need was longer term than yours (haven’t lived in the US in a little less than a decade) so my price requirement was significantly lower.
Good luck! I’ll be following this to see what others say.
Seconding Google Voice. I did the same thing when I moved abroad years ago. Super simple and it’s generally worked well. I’ve been able to use it to make outgoing “domestic” US calls; what was the roadblock you ran into @paris?
The one big caveat is that some businesses, often banks, won’t send texts to VoIP numbers like GV. It can make things difficult when you can’t get them to send you a verification text.
Also keep in mind that regardless of what approach you take, all calls going to your US number - including spam - will still be during US times, which can be a real pain depending on your local offset.
Skype In can usually receive incoming SMS verifications. You usually have to manually check the app though, they don't necessarily pop up as notifications.
My issue with outgoing calls is that they simply fail: it seems to want a US-based phone number to route the outgoing call through. Granted, that was my experience a few years ago and I’ve since stopped even trying, so maybe I’ll take a look to see if anything’s changed.
I have a few updates on my research. (tagging @paris)
Telnyx/IoT sim cards: This seemed super promising, but I don't think it will work out. I got a telnyx esim on my phone for testing, and the data worked perfectly, but I could not get sms to work. I tried pretty much everything I could think of (apn settings, every US carrier it supports, changing pretty much every setting in the website, etc). Nothing would get sms to work at all. I really wished this worked, because the price for my usage would be unbeatable.
MVNOs: I think this is the route I am going to go. I found an article from Tello about activating Tello service, including porting a number, while overseas. My use case is explicitly supported, with callouts that support will help with issues. It does not have any international roaming, which for my use case is a benefit, because it avoids all possible roaming charges. They also support wifi calling, which can run from a data plan on another sim card. Since its just a sim card, it integrates natively with the iOS dialer and iMessage. They have a plan with 100 minutes, unlimited sms, and no data for $5/month. I would like for it to be lower, but $5/month is probably the lowest I could expect for a full sim plan.
Google voice is still my backup if I have any issues, but I think I will be going with Tello.