Afternoon, all. I’ve kept a UK mobile number for any contacts who don’t have my French number, but EE has told me I will now have to pay about £10 a week to use it in the EU. I want to “port” this number to my French number and would appreciate any advice on a service that will handle this for a reasonable cost. A couple have been mentioned on SF but the cost seems to vary widely. I’m with Reglo. I won’t be using any data with my UK number – it’s just for the odd contact who may not have my new number. Many thanks in advance for any recommendations.
I now have my old UK number that is with 3 which is now PAYG as a SIM card in my phone and my RegloMobile number is now an eSIM (I asked RegloMobile to change me from a traditional sim to an eSIM) - this means I can have both numbers active at the same time in the same phone. (iPhone 13).
I now pay nothing to Three as all my outgoing calls & data are with RegloMobile.
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It’s not possible to port a UK number to a French provider.
You could seek a better UK deal and port the number to that.
Depends what phone he has though - must have a later iphone with e-sim capability or an android dual sim phone.
I was hoping the new iphone 15 might be modern and have three sims, but no, typical Apple, never a step ahead…
Thanks, Billy. In that case, I think I’ll just dump the UK number.
You could port your UK number to GiffGaff. I’ve done that for my old UK number. There’s a pay-as-you-go option which I use and it costs me about 10€/year.
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Port the number to 1p mobile (uses EE) which needs a £10 top-up every 4 months so averages £2.50 month. Use it (or any new UK sim) in the UK before using it in France. Calls cost 1p/min and texts 1p but data is pricey. Roaming at the same cost.
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Aren’t most UK Payg packages just free to receive calls & texts - mine certainly is.
My £5/month pay and go package includes a bunch of free call in the UK but EE has just brought in a large(ish) supplementary charge for use in the EU.
In that case, if you port the number to giff-gaff, you’ll need to start with £10 but it lasts forever and if you don’t make any calls you won’t have to top it up.
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They invented the smart phone 
It’s a dual-sim Android phone but no eSim capability.
Not really.
You don’t need to have an eSIM - if you have a dual sim then that is fine.
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Thanks, Brian. My only concern is this bit of the giffgaff terms and conditions: “You may only use our services in the EU and selected destinations for periodic travel, like holidays or short breaks.” I’m a permanent French resident.
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I thought they did, it was an iPod with a phone in it. Plus the app store concept and the app store concept, without which all phones are dumb. Jobs was a visionary.
I did have a little Google and there’s some twaddle about IBM inventing smart phones. They didn’t 
IBM used Blackberries tied into Lotus Notes which were only good for emails and diary.
Smartphones in a format were around from about the year 2000 - they had functionality and were useful but things moved on when the iPhone appeared in 2007 along with similar devices from other providers.
I remember I had a PDA which was very similar to a smartphone but had no sim.
Indeed, not a phone. By tying the two together Mr. Jobs made the breakthrough. The app store was the real catalyst.
He did the same with windowing and the mouse. I remember the original Macintosh. I also have great respect for PARC, of course. Gates, who never invented anything in his life, piggybacked on IBM to drive his shitty OS.
My point was that IMO accusing Apple of a lack of innovation is the technology equivalent of the “what did the Romans ever do for us” sketch
So am I but since it only gets used very occasionally, it doesn’t seem to be a problem! Also they were very happy to send me a SIM card in France…
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Hi Al,
I’m also a French resident and had the same concern. However, I have now had the GiffGaff account for about a year and it continues to work. I occasionally receive (free) text messages from them saying “Welcome to France, here are the costs for using your mobile…” but the service continues to work. I receive perhaps 30 text messages and 20 phone calls per year in France so for a light user their service seems ideal. They are also one of the only service providers who will post the sim to a French address, but I do not know if you have to be in the UK to actually activate it for the first time - I happened to be on a short UK visit when I activated mine.
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