Keep USA cell # while living in Yurp?

[Peruvian]

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My wife and I are planning on heading to Europe (both Schengen and Balkans) for an extended period next year. We would love to keep our US cell phone numbers, if possible but want to drop the expensive US cell carrier we have.&nbsp; We know about local eSims, but would like to be able to send and receive calls, texts and 2fa on our US #. Google Fi states that its not for travel over 90 days, Google Voice doesnt provide 2fa messages, a parking service will hold our number but not provide any mobile service, etc. We don&#39;t anticipate any significant time returning to the US and would likely just sign up for Mint Mobile or similar if we return for a few weeks.&nbsp;What are US citizens using when traveling for long periods through multiple countries?</p>
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[m2711c]

Could you have folks call your local number here in the state and just use call forwarding to send it to whatever phone you want to use in the europes?

[mcski]

Switch to a cheap af cell service here, port your numbers there, so you can keep your US number at lower cost. Then get an eSIM and assign your US number to it. I used my US number w Lyca and after set up, I never saw the og euro number again. All the calls will go on the eSIM account but calls in and out will be same ol US number

[up an down]

Can your phone support 2 sims? Either 2 e SIM or 2 cards or one of each?.. If so you can switch back and forth for voice calls and data on one sim.. Text and WiFi on the other sim....according to what I have read this is a work around for 90 day data limit with Fi international service.. I have used Fi a couple of international trips between 45-50 days..Pixel phones... So I don&#39;t have first hand experience with this method.

[riser4]

I can attest that Google Fi will eventually cut you off. And from then on, any return visits to that country will get cut off even quicker than 90. I went through this with thing #1 going to school in Canada. Otherwise, i cant help you. I do know that on a recent trip to Montreal I was able to use my Google voice number for texts to other US mobile numbers, both traveling with me and in the US.

[Peruvian]

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Could you have folks call your local number here in the state and just use call forwarding to send it to whatever phone you want to use in the europes?

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I believe this would require continuing to pay for a US plan that we won&#39;t use and doesn&#39;t seem economical as a result.</p>

[Peruvian]

This forum is so busted that replying with quote only works every now and again, so...

mcski - Do you have any recommendations for a cheap af cell service?

up and down - iPhone 14 so multiple eSims, but I've read that unless data/calls/texts occur in the US that Fi will drop you. riser4's experience is another data point to support this.

[Danno]

This forum is so busted that replying with quote only works every now and again, so...

forum is busted but there are ways to work around it. Tapatalk seems to have none or few of the errors that a PC does so I am assuming you're on a PC? If so, right clicking on reply with quote works, or double clicking works. Both of those ways take you to a screen that will give you all the BS characters, so a good strategy is right click the reply with quote, on the subsequent screen copy the whole quoted stuff, then back out and paste it into the "quick reply" box at the bottom of the page. that will give you the quoted post without all the extraneous characters that come from things like " ' and the like.

[riser4]

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I believe this would require continuing to pay for a US plan that we won&#39;t use and doesn&#39;t seem economical as a result.</p>

Up above you wrote that you cant do MFA with Google Voice. Are you sure? Which type? Because when I was looking at Google Voice before setting it up, folks were writing that banking iwhile overseas is exactly why they set up a US Google voice number.

[skaredshtles]

Up above you wrote that you cant do MFA with Google Voice. Are you sure? Which type? Because when I was looking at Google Voice before setting it up, folks were writing that banking iwhile overseas is exactly why they set up a US Google voice number.

I use Google Voice as my "main" number, and MFA comes through on the vast majority of my accounts just fine. There *are* a few places that will not accept a Voice number for MFA, though - Citibank being the one I can think of offhand.

[whitekingsalmon]

Keep it simple... use your usa phone. And use WhatsApp

[riser4]

I use Google Voice as my "main" number, and MFA comes through on the vast majority of my accounts just fine. There *are* a few places that will not accept a Voice number for MFA, though - Citibank being the one I can think of offhand.

The discussions I read were also about using the text feature of a Google voice number for banks and such. I know plain GV texting works, as i used it last week. However, I haven't used it for MFA and I have heard but didn't yet experience in my small sample size that GV texts sometimes randomly just dont go through.

[mcski]

Peruvian- I used LYCA for UK and France. They had a shitload of plans and the unlimited everything was cheap af by American standards and no contract so if you change country to somewhere that another carrier worked better you can change at anytime. I had T-Mobile from US and Lyca UK that I purchased in London enabled at the same time so I rarely had network issues unless between cities. It was a lot easier searching for esims in the uk because of the web pages being in English, but doable anywhere really. Much more transparency on pricing over there than in the US

I had trouble using the free version Google voice for some things over there. I think if you pay, it’s more usable. WhatsApp is better suited to international calls.

[Peruvian]

Keep it simple... use your usa phone. And use WhatsApp

ATT and Verizon have been known to restrict service for folks using international roaming for over 90 days from what I've read.

Plus that's just stupid expensive.

[Peruvian]

It sounds like parking our number with a cheap service ($2/mo or so) is our best option. Then we can just choose a local eSim for data/calls/texts as needed. If we plan well, we can use WhatsApp for messaging and calls over wifi for much of our time overseas. Overall it will be much more economical than our current ATT Mobile service anyway.