topic Re: Travelling to Australia & want to keep UK number live for when I return to UK in Mobile Services

Travelling to Australia & want to keep UK number live for when I return to UK

Foxy303 — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 18:32:25 GMT

My EE SIM only monthly contract has just expired. I am going to Australia next month for one year. I will get an Australian SIM to use when I'm there but I want to keep my UK number for when I return to the UK. How is best to do this?

Re: Travelling to Australia & want to keep UK number live for when I return to UK

XRaySpeX — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 19:09:23 GMT

Your contract hasn't expired, just the min. term expired. After the min. term they just carry on at the same price on a rolling 30-days' notice basis until you explicitly cancel, upgrade or port your no. away.

You'd best cancel your contract more than 30 days before you leave UK & ask for it to be transferred to PAYG so that the SIM gets changed to PAYG in time for you to use it to make a call or send a text while you are still in UK, thus enabling it for roaming.

Thereafter you need to send a chargeable text within every 179 days to keep it alive & out of hibernation. Of course you'll need to top-up occasionally to be able to pay the charges for these.

Re: Travelling to Australia & want to keep UK number live for when I return to UK

bristolian — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 19:03:06 GMT

@XRaySpeX wrote:

You'd best cancel your contract more than 30 days before you leave UK & ask for it to be transferred to PAYG so that the SIM gets changed to PAYG in time for you to use it to make a call or send a text while you are still in UK, thus enabling it for roaming.

To add, if you miss this, your new PAYG SIM will not be activated for use abroad and will not get coverage in any foreign countries.

That will prevent you from sending or receiving any texts, making or receiving any calls, or using mobile data. Avoiding hibernation will be impossible in this situation.