xizzles

I can't believe, after a decade or so on these wonderful forum boards, it never crossed my mind until now to ask about this: what's the best local pre-paid SIM card that would allow me to keep a local (Australian) number yet allow international roaming?

Obviously, I'll still be based in Singapore, but since starting up the business venture about a year ago, I'm increasingly spending more time back in Australia. And I find that a lot of times, they require an Australian contact number.

My business partners have more than held up their end of the bargain (in fact, they've carried my fat arse and all its deadweight stoically for the past 9 to 10 months or so), and my conscience has finally kicked me in the nuts to get my sorry act together and start making myself useful.

So, I would gratefully welcome any helpful suggestions, spiteful scorn, snide sarcasm or just plain insults (although I know the forum's way too nice for any of the above apart from the first option)

quoll

Vodafone has a $20 sim which you can set up with international roaming and receive texts - just don't take calls or send texts while overseas. I keep my Aussie number alive this way as I need an Aus number for some bank transactions. Much better than shelling out $20 a month with the other Telcos for almost the same service

xizzles

Great stuff! Bingo answer! Thanks ever so much, quoll. Karma has been given gratefully.

quoll

No sweat! The other bonus is that you can renew on line with Paypal IIRC but just a few easy clicks. Be sure that when you sign up with them that you specify International Roaming - they were a bit tardy when I did mine and I had to have a phone call with the help centre from UK where I had discovered it wasn't roaming.

Ouch, looks like I might have sold you a bum steer - they've been phased out https://community.vodafone.com.au/t5...ut/td-p/409718 (I just keep paying) but there is another called pay as you go plus which has 365 day longevity, just costs a bit more

GarryP

If you are just wanting to keep the number alive, and you aren't about to use it (or receive calls), you might do OK with a dual SIM phone. Provided you can have both registered with the local provider at the same time, that should enable you to both use a local SIM, and keep the Australian one alive. It would probably need to be a 4G+3G phone mind.

Typical charges for receiving a call are $1 pm (Telstra is more, natch) so if you can find less than this, so much the better.

Otherwise, there might be an idea of having a VoIP number in Australia, and when you are in Australia redirecting it to the mobile, and while in Singapore just using a VoIP app on the phone to receive any calls. You could even just use the data based VoIP app all the time.