perfikalgarve

Hi,
Has anyone been able to keep a UK Mobile number for longer than 60 days in portugal ?

Alan PT

Four years and counting

Technically I'm in breach of the operator conditions, but since I don't use it very much they will still be making a profit on it, so have little incentive to disconnect me. If I started racking up roaming use more then I might find it cancelled!

guesswork

I am still using mine after many years in Spain and Portugal. I live near the border. I changed to PAYG I use Skype Whatsapp and other apps Only use the phone for calls as a last resort

Eddie5425

My Partner and I have a really good deal with ID Mobile from years ago £3.99 month all the usual. Text , calls, 0.5 gb rolled over to 1gb all in. We've kept it going its been handy. Six months now.
Will stop only if they introduce roaming charges.

Eddie

andywally

It took about 6 months with ours to incur roaming charges with o2, they didnt cancel it they just added horrendous roaming charges so we cancelled them and got PT ones, if we need to ring the UK we just use the data on watsapp, the 2 UK sims where costing approx £80 together with the roaming charges, we got 2x PT sims for 40euro a month together, unlimited everthing (subject to fair usage)

Score76

Smarty mobile, 8 months and counting since the phone left the Algarve. Cheap as chips and roams onto Meo.

SgtTroy

Yep, for years, but on payg, no issues at all. A text/call for 10p every few months and that's it.

If you are on a contract with monthly allowance it might be more difficult to keep the number, and you may consider moving to payg either with the same network, or with the one that provides the best conditions.

Ferretofthemata

Had a giffgaff one for 6 years. Had to be in the Uk to activate it. Then they just send me a message every 6 months or so and I have to send one text to keep it active

Score76

We were on giffgaff until 2 years ago. They cut you off after 60 days of being outside the UK. I raised a ticket to get it reinstated during lockdown saying we'd got stuck in Portugal and they gave us another 60 days but no budging after that hence we moved to Smarty.

riv

Can you provide the gist of Smarty's terms , both for UK and Portuguese usage ?

Score76

I think what you're after would be here:
https://help.smarty.co.uk/en/article...-international

Our three sims, 2 phones plus a tablet, have never been restricted in any way and have been in Portugal much longer than 60 days. I guess they reserve the right to change that and implement what they say in their terms.

EU.flag

I wouldnt chance it.

"We will monitor your usage, and if you spend 60 consecutive days abroad, we have the right to suspend all services on your account. This means that you will not be able to use your SIM."

Score76

I think the bottom line to this thread is that if you read the terms and conditions of any of the uk networks or mvno's, somewhere in there will be something along those lines. No nations SIM cards are priced to be roaming constantly. This thread is essentially asking for experience of providers that don't enforce those "we may" or "we reserve the right to" clauses.

I suspect if you're a heavy user then you're much more likely to get suspended. The 3 sims we have are all on a 3GB tariff, with refund for data not used and that works well for us. It's only a few quid per month so perhaps we are below the radar or as someone else already stated perhaps there's still enough in it for them to make a little.

Alan PT

I had to do a bit of interfacing to telco billing systems and my wife spent years developing and implementing them. They are *much* more of a mess than you can possibly imagine, with lots of old tariffs which haven't been sold for years/decades, data problems from mergers/demergers and just plain old human error. Roaming introduces a further layer of complexity and error as data transfers happen between different operators, often by bulk exports weeks in arrears

Running automatic cleanups to disable access is therefore significantly harder/more expensive and error prone than you think. Doesn't mean it won't happen, but your chances of staying under the radar are pretty good. But if you rack up a lot of roaming charges, you are much more likely to pop up on an exception report for manual review and potential suspension!