Rats, small print says Lebara WiFi calling abroad only works in Switzerland.
I know, I was explaining what I do to counter the issues you mentioned. My phone doesn’t support wifi calling so I use the regular apps.
As I said I use Lebara sim because it does provide what I want, bigger roaming data allowance than the others, 100 international minutes, low cost deals via comparison sites.
Vodaphone network in the UK and BT, GiffGaff is the same crap network with bolt ons at extra cost
5G is basically 4G with improved reaction times - the much advertised “zero latency”.
It also adds the possibility of using millimetric frequency bands to the system, though due to the enormous RF pathloss at these much higher frequencies and said frequencies being inimical to biological life at the power levels needed to match the range of current 4G frequency bands, don’t expect to see true 5G deployed outside of city centres.
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No, propagation is the same when using the long established frequency bands used for 2/3/4G technologies.
Using the 12-20GHz “millimetric” bands, propagation is below 500 metres at human safe power levels.
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Do you need a UK address for a Lebara sim?
My BT Mobile sim still works fine in France, but the monthly cost is creeping up (we have a family account with four numbers, with our kids resident in the UK). I use Reglo for voice and data in France.
As its an international company probably not normally, I dont know what deals are available in France but they would have to send a UK sim somewhere unless you can get a virtual sim which I havent looked into. Yes BT, switched my BIL in the UK to Lebara and its £4.99 per month where BT were charging almost £40.
3 1/2 years ago when we abandoned our kids 
in the UK to move to France, our BT Mobile family account cost £40/month, so £10 each. But it’s now £57 iirc, so maybe time to change. We do still have a UK address but it would be simpler if we could register our UK sim number via our primary residence French address.
@Notalot can you explain please? pathloss? biological life issue? Are levels being set that are really safe?
Not that I ever expected the promise of 5G to be delivered outside Paris or very major towns. But that was for cost reasons / reasons of where the concentrations of voters, errrr I mean Orange subscribers, live 
Lebara.fr does exist but I expect you’d then be linked to the more limited .fr packaging they do. I think there’s something in international telecoms regulation that says you’ll always need a billing address in the country that ‘owns’ your number.
A bit like banking and intellectual property/ digital content - much of the restrictions these internatioal ‘territory’ carve-ups result in, don’t make sense to a mobile individual.user.
Yes, I found the option buried in settings. I’ll find a black spot in the cave and see how it works. The Irish SIM gave me the message below when I tried to activate it, so I’ll give them a call (over the mobile network 
)
That’s something else I’ve learned today 
Edit: That’s sorted, both lines on both phones (mine and my wife’s) now set up for VoWiFi. I’ll keep an eye on the status bar to see if it kicks in.
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Pathloss is how much energy a radio signal loses going from A to B. The higher the frequency, the greater the loss.
This is why 4G uses the 800MHz (old terrestrial TV band) and 900MHz (old 1/2G cellular band) for rural coverage.
Exposure to high levels of non-ionising radiation is bad for organic life forms. This is why the transmission power off any device emitting this type of energy is very strictly controlled.
If you have a microwave oven in your house, you might have noticed a lattice or mesh built into the glass door. This is to keep the radio frequency energy inside the oven and out of you because microwave overs work by producing radio frequency energy at the excitation frequency of water molecules.
Basically, the RF engergy makes the water molecules jump around and creates heat which cooks the stuff that the water molecules are inside of.
As humans are 70% water and don’t react well to being cooked from the inside, mobile phones etc. have to be very carefully built to limit the amount of RF energy they radiate into us. Specific Absorption Rate or SAR is the industry term for this.
At lower frequencies, your mobile phone can transmit radio signals (AKA propagation) over long distances, giving you decent service levels when out and about whilst keeping these emotions at human safe levels.
At the much higher frequencies possible with 5G, the Earth’s atmosphere along with everything else in the path of any radio signal is absorbing way more of its energy and emitting enough power to overcome this would be highly unsafe in close proximity to humans.
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I KNEW they were controlling us! Where’s my tinfoil hat? 
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We had a 5g repeater installed in the street, a few metres from our terraced house in Bristol. The 5g speeds were stellar if you stood right in the bay window, but by the time you got to the back garden 4g measured just as fast. Strangely, in our part of the Jurassic coast, you can stand on certain cliff tops and in certain country lanes and get about 450 MB/s over 5g. No idea how or why!
Having a dual sim phone I use 1p mobile at £10 for four months for my UK calls and texts plus roaming when I’m in France. Alternatively, paying £30 covers unlimited calls and texts for 12 months but no roaming.
For data I have sim 2 on Smarty (Three) 30 day, no contract, unlimited calls and texts 4GB deal including 12GB roaming.
I also have a Lebara sim on a 30 day, no contract, deal initially costing 99p a month for 6 months then £4.99 which also includes roaming. At the end of the 6 months I will cancel, online, the recurring payment and look for a similar deal. I have done this with 30 day, no contract, payg sims for some years without problem.
I also use the Smarty or Lebara sim in a 4G mobile wifi dongle in the car for my passenger to use with an iPad
All well and good, but none of these UK networks support WiFi calling when out of the UK. My question was about that. I can’t use my UK number inside my home in France, which has thick stone walls, because WiFi calling isn’t supported.
Which comes back to using a sim card router and whatsapp or other comms app which is what I have to do. Wifi calling is relatively rare still.
Uh, no it’s not. The majority of mobile plans in the UK and France include WiFi calling, as do most phones these days. My beef is that UK plans don’t let you use it abroad. I don’t yet know if French operators let you use it abroad.
I think you have established the point UK plans dont allow wifi calling abroad. Time to move on to what you can use, cheap sim card router with a Reglo sim or other and you can get calls indoors, put the router by a window or get one with SMA sockets and an extetnal aerial.
I don’t think that would work. Until a year ago our house broadband was via a sim card router and I was not able to use WiFi calling on my BT Mobile sim back then. Xpatfone is the most likely solution. Their service doesn’t use a sim card. They use VOIP via an app, a bit like WhatsApp, so it doesn’t care what the Internet connection is. But they are a phone company and operate a telephone service, so SMS texts, landline and mobile calls can be sent and received and they can port your mobile number to their service. It will work wherever there is an Internet connection in the world. I need to test it thoroughly first before porting my own number because if i remove my number from our family mobile plan (four numbers) my wife and kids will also need to change. Xpatfone can also be used for setting up WhatsApp accounts and for two-factor SMS text verification. Frustratingly, there are very few examples of customers reporting their experiences with the service.
That would tell me all I needed to know.