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How I Keep My American Phone Number While Living in France

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My first year of living abroad in France, I was quick to get a French phone number. Not only is it necessary for banking and other local services, but French phone plans are very reasonably priced. However, instead of ditching my American number, I decided to keep it as well. After all, I still had my American bank, and with 2-factor authentication everywhere these days, having an American number remained essential. I was on T-Mobile’s Experience Beyond plan at the time, which came with plenty of foreign data every month, and no up-charges for being abroad. Since my phone has a dual e-SIM capacity, like most new smartphones, living with two numbers was a no-brainer. Thus, my double number life began. 

While I was in the States this summer, my family and I decided to all switch to AT&T for our phone plans. I followed the crowd and thought the package would be comparable on the foreign front. I was wrong. On arriving back in France, I received a notification that I would be charged $10 a day while traveling. That simply was not going to work for me, so I turned off my American number and looked into what my options were after I finished unpacking. 

Solving the Problem

My research led me to find US Mobile and Tello, both cost-efficient mobile companies that boast good customer service and cell service while abroad. I opted for Tello, bought a cheap $6 a month plan to test it out, and tried to activate the new e-SIM. The prompts online and on my phone made it look pretty easy, but after a moment it was clear that my new number wasn’t going to activate on its own. I gave customer service a call on my French number and explained my situation. They were kind and regretted to inform me that an American number could only be activated on American soil. I wouldn’t be able to start using my newly purchased number until I was back in the States. 

I accepted the reality and swallowed my pride. After all, it was my own fault for not being more proactive about this from the outset. Thankfully, I had a trip planned back to the States in three months, so I transferred my iMessage account to my French number, asked all my friends and family to contact me through WhatsApp, and lived without my American number until my return. 

Once back in the US, I did my research, updated my account through Tello and activated the number that had been patiently waiting for me. I called another friendly customer service representative and asked her all the details about how foreign roaming would work on my account when I was back in France. I purchased the additional “buy as you go” credit that is necessary for their foreign travel (this was a $20 charge) and I took a deep breath — grateful to have my phone problems behind me, or so I thought. 

Rubber Meets the Road

When I landed in Paris a week later, I turned off airplane mode to find only my French number receiving service. The American number showed no signal. I searched in my phone settings and enabled roaming while abroad on the new number. Hours later, and still nothing. 

Frustrated, a week later I finally logged into my Tello account to see what the issue was. I scrolled through my settings to discover that I had missed checking the box to authorize foreign service while abroad. I checked the box, hit refresh, laughed at myself, and turned off my phone for the reset. When I turned it back on a few minutes later, there were those little bars I had been searching for the last three months. 

So far, I have had both numbers activated on my phone for a week. As my French phone plan is my primary source of data, I have only used five cents worth of data on my Tello plan. This is incredibly reasonable for a safety net in case I should need to receive pass keys or other identifying information that can only be sent to an American number. Overall, I am very pleased with my experience with Tello, minus the hiccups of getting my service activated in the beginning. 

Whether you are traveling abroad or starting a new life for yourself in France, be sure to do research on the allowances of your phone plan well before you land on the other side of the ocean. You may even consider activating a new SIM beforehand accordingly. We live and we learn, so with all this learning I guess I can be sure that I’m living. Do you have another American service provider that you’ve used abroad? We’d love to hear about your experience. 

Photo by Maxence Pira on Unsplash

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free mobile

Firing SFR Mobile

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This is the unwitting third in a series of “firing” articles.  Once you realize that it’s definitely more difficult and hence, more satisfying, to fire service providers in France, you are far more willing to do so.  Some time ago I shared the experience of firing Société Générale, my very first bank in Paris, but a luxury afforded me because I already had a business account at BNP Paribas.  A telemarketing experience late last year gave me the opportunity to much more easily fire EDF in favor of Engie.  When I saw that cost savings in banking and electricity, I wondered where else I might trim the fat.

SFR

I walked into SFR within 24 hours of arriving in France in 2013.  My French was impossibly lacking in confidence and vocabulary.  Thankfully, two of the staff there spoke English fairly well and gave me a list of the documents I would need to get a mobile phone line.  One of those was the banking details (what is known here as a RIB — relevé identité bancaire) of my not-yet-in-existence French bank account.  Thankfully, I was able to get a bank account set up the following day, and bank details in hand, I made my way to the SFR store once again.

I knew that I would be calling the United States and I didn’t want to have to switch to Skype all the time to make those calls.  But, unlike cell phone plans in America, cell phone plans in Europe are not only fairly inexpensive with large data packages, but those plans include international calling.

The plan I originally signed up for offered hours and hours of free calls to the US as well as dozens of gigabytes of data.  I was also allowed to roam around the EU on that data.  Total cost?  60 €/month.

Over the years the plan continued to upgrade and/or I would upgrade when I saw new features available.  The plan I ended up abandoning recently had unlimited data and calling to the US and Canada and the EU.  It also meant that whether I was physically in the United States or here in Europe, I really had no worry about getting additional charges, as that roaming was included.  I would only get charged if I made calls to countries not designated in my plan, or traveled to places outside of my plan and wanted data.

Unfortunately, SFR’s data packages in Asia, South America, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand were always prohibitively high, so I ended up getting a local SIM when I traveled to those places and put that SIM inside an unlocked mini wifi device, which then allowed me to tether multiple devices, including my French phone.

Free

Xavier Niel, who has an estimated net worth of $9.3B USD, is the founder of many businesses, including the ISP and mobile phone provider Free.  A year before I arrived in France, in 2012, he created Free Mobile, which was offering unlimited text, voice, and data for 19,99 €/month.  Over the years this plan continued to upgrade until it essentially matched my SFR plan.  The highest tier plan didn’t offer unlimited data, but 150 gigs of domestic data and 25 gigs of foreign data per month was going to be more than I would use.  When I discovered this plan I checked with a friend who had Free to ask about the service.  She said that in the city and in the United States it had been fine.  The only times it had been iffy was in some parts of rural France, but that made sense, given that the company wasn’t even ten years old and was still building out its infrastructure.

Still, it seemed to be too good to be true!  In addition to use in France and the EU, the Free plan gave me use of my phone and data plan in Australia and New Zealand, places where I normally spend at least $100-$200/month on data.  But who was I to argue with what would be a 600 € savings a year from what was at that point a 70 €/month charge (the price had risen slightly over the years) from SFR?  I checked with SFR to make sure that I didn’t have a contract in place, then picked a day to go to Free.

I brought all the items I needed to open an account at SFR: passport, electricity bill, RIB.  The woman who helped me smiled and said that I wouldn’t need any of that: just my debit card.  The way number portability works in France is simple.  You call 3179 from your phone.  You will hear a recording that reads a number to you.  That is the RIO (relevé d’identité operateur).  The recording also states whether your number is free of a contract (and if not, what you will have to pay if you choose to port your number anyway).  You receive a corresponding text message with all that information.

The person helping me at Free typed in my mobile number and then this RIO.  She then asked whether I preferred to be billed on the 1st or the 15th (I chose the latter).  Then she scanned a card that held a nano-SIM and handed it to me.  She told me that I would get a text from SFR sometime in the coming days telling me precisely when my number would be ported.

The Switch

Sure enough, about a week later, SFR notified me that my number would be ported on the 26th of the month between 11h-15h00.  I thought that I would see the coverage drop at some point during that window and when it did I swapped SIMs, changed my voicemail recording, and went on with my day.  A couple weeks later, SFR refunded me for the portion of the month that was unused due to my cancellation.

I’ve now had Free for almost two months and heartily endorse it.  I’ve not noticed a change in my service quality but have certainly noticed the change in charges to my bank account each month!  That’s to say nothing of the growing confidence that comes with choosing your service providers based on price and quality, not by default and laziness, which is something that is instinctive in America, but not-so-normal here in France.

TAIP is 100% reader-supported through tipping. If you want to leave us a tip of any amount it would be highly appreciated. These tips help support our efforts to keep TAIP an ad-free environment. Just as at a cafe, the tips are split evenly among the team.