Moving abroad for a year and want to keep number

arte

Hello

I'm going to live in the US for a year and I won't use my UK number. I want to cancel my contract with Three but I want to keep my number so that when I'm back here I can re-use it again.

Anyone can please advice me on what is best to do without getting into the basic contract with my network? They have offered me to pay £8per month to keep the number alive

Thanks for any help!

wongataa

You could port it to a PAYG sim and put a minimal top up on it and do the bare minimum to keep the sim active. That would be the easiest and cheapest way.

J_B

Three used to do a 'contract' called sim-zero, which was basically payg, but with a monthly bill.
When someone from this house went to study in Italy for 9 months, they phoned 333 and asked to be transferred to sim-zero and they agreed. This was however 3 years ago, so not sure if you could 'wing it' now!

grumbler

wongataa wrote: »

You could port it to a PAYG

Porting is to another network. One can switch to PAYG with the same netwok too.

d123

arte wrote: »

Hello

I'm going to live in the US for a year and I won't use my UK number. I want to cancel my contract with Three but I want to keep my number so that when I'm back here I can re-use it again.

Anyone can please advice me on what is best to do without getting into the basic contract with my network? They have offered me to pay £8per month to keep the number alive

Thanks for any help!

Get Three to convert it to PAYG, top it up online (first top up has to be £10), after 5 and a half months add a £5 top up, do it again at month 11.

It'll cost you £20 over the year and you'll still have £20 credit on your return.

Ian011

In another recent thread, someone mentioned a network with a £2 per month contract.

Something like that would keep the number going, otherwise a pay-as-you-go deal - but you'll need to use the SIM every few months in order to meet the minimum usage requirements.

redux

Swap to Three pay as you go, and you could still use it over there occasionally, like receiving calls from home.

Incoming calls are free in USA, with their Like Home arrangement, even without any monthly bundle added.

No need for regular top-ups as someone suggested, just add £5 on their online top-ups, then just use it within any 6 month period. Sending a couple of text messages in the year would be cheapest, or if you call anyone here or there, that would cost 13.8 pence a minute.

https://www.three.co.uk/Support/Roaming_and_international/Mobile_roaming?content_aid=1214306357859

grumbler

Ian011 wrote: »

In another recent thread, someone mentioned a network with a £2 per month contract.

In the same thread I mentioned £1.

d123

redux wrote: »

Swap to Three pay as you go, and you could still use it over there occasionally, like receiving calls from home.

Incoming calls are free in USA, with their Like Home arrangement, even without any monthly bundle added.

No need for regular top-ups as someone suggested, just add £5 on their online top-ups, then just use it within any 6 month period. Sending a couple of text messages in the year would be cheapest, or if you call anyone here or there, that would cost 13.8 pence a minute.

https://www.three.co.uk/Support/Roaming_and_international/Mobile_roaming?content_aid=1214306357859

You can't use Feel at Home for more than 2 months in a 12 month period and if you do they can suspend the account, if they were to suspend it while he was away he wouldn't be able to use it or top up and then could lose the number 6 months later.

That's why just ensuring you register before leaving and then top up online just under every 6 months. Every top up resets the 6 month clock.

If the USA wasn't a Feel at Home country then your plan of making minimal use in the country might have more merit.

grumbler

d123 wrote: »

You can't use Feel at Home for more than 2 months in a 12 month period...

If so, can the OP not use it in, say, 6th and 12th months instead of topups?
That said, I am not sure how they calculate 2 months, i.e. the the phone doesn't need to be used in UK in the 7th months to reset their counter.

DigForVictory

Can you not get the phone onto a PAYG contract, and sort a child to keep it powered & send you a text each week? Or a photo?
Might be a nice way of keeping in touch with a family/friend without loosing your number. A year in, you'll have a wonderful collection of texts &/or pictures which would pave the way for a photobook or framed wordcloud as an end-of-exercise thank you.