Cellphone American number to Uk?

I am moving soon Hopefully on a fiancé visa, I currently have a iPhone 6 on Verizon. What is the best option for me regarding my phone? Will my iPhone 6 work there with a uk number? Does it need to be unlocked? Does Verizon have options to let you keep your American number or is it too pricey? Help!

You'll need to get your phone unlocked before leaving.  Not sure how you do this, but I'm sure Verizon could direct you.

I'd recommend getting a contract with Three when you are here.  Their contracts have a "Feel at Home" option which means when you travel (about 40 countries are covered), you can use your phone, just as if you were in the UK.  And the US is one of the countries.  So when I go home, I can call my husband as much as I want, use WHATSAPP with my friends, use the maps for navigation, use all the data I want for no additional fee.

I just use Facetime and WHATSAPP, so I don't have a US number.  I'm sure someone else will know more about that stuff than me.

I'm with Three and thankfully the Feel at Home scheme is available in most of the countries I have been visiting lately.

With Feel At Home, calls and texts are only in your allowance if they are to UK numbers though.

You can receive any calls and texts for free but if you are in the US, for example, you will be charged £1.40/min to make calls to US numbers and 1.3p per text to a US number.

Any data you use will be included in your monthly allowance, but you will be charged if you go over your allowance.

When I was in the US in August, I apparently saved £2,500 in data charges because I just used my monthly data allowance .


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I am moving soon Hopefully on a fiancé visa, I currently have a iPhone 6 on Verizon. What is the best option for me regarding my phone? Will my iPhone 6 work there with a uk number? Does it need to be unlocked? Does Verizon have options to let you keep your American number or is it too pricey? Help!

There is no way to keep your US number and use it in the UK without international charges.

I had version before I moved and at the time there were no options to unlock your phone with the. The only option was to Jailbreak it. It was simply easier to get a new phone over here. My husband had it all set up for me and charged the day I arrived. I set it up on the way home from Heathrow.

I have EE and how good it is varies by region. I haven't seen a single company that works great everywhere. It's nothing like the blanket coverage the US has.

I moved in Dec and also was on Verizon. They said going forward all phones were unlocked. I had no issues putting a sim in my iPhone here. My phone was pretty much brand new due to an insurance swap. I was able to get a SIM card with 02 right away, I recently switched to virgin and I don't have international rates, but had to call home in an emergency. It cost me less than 2 pounds for the call. But I iMessage my friends/family or Facebook/whatsapp. Haven't had any issues keeping in touch back home

I am with O2 and have an add-on bundle where I get 1000 minutes to call 5 US numbers every month as well as a US number my family can call to talk to me.  It's not the same as a US number, just provides a US number for them to dial which then connects to my UK number and vice versa when I call them.  It's been a lifesaver!  We message each other on WhatsApp.  I am sure other companies have something similar.

I am with O2 and have an add-on bundle where I get 1000 minutes to call 5 US numbers every month as well as a US number my family can call to talk to me.  It's not the same as a US number, just provides a US number for them to dial which then connects to my UK number and vice versa when I call them.  It's been a lifesaver!  We message each other on WhatsApp.  I am sure other companies have something similar.

Wow, that sounds great. In what way isn't this the same as a US number?

Wow, that sounds great. In what way isn't this the same as a US number?

You will have a UK number which will be your main phone number.  All this add-on provides is a US number through which you family/friends in the US can connect to your UK phone number.

I wish I knew about the Three deal! I will look into it... I live in a small town, so they might not be an option here. 

I don't know if you had any concern over 'saving' your US number, but I was with Verizon before I moved overseas 5 years ago, and my parents paid something like $3/month to 'save' my number while I was away. They basically just retained the right to my mobile number for me since they assumed I would go back eventually and I'd had it since I was 16. I was able to reactivate it for weeks at a time when I went back to visit them.

When it became clear I wasn't going back and they wanted to save money, they stopped paying for it with their monthly bills. Now when I go back, I either buy a pay and go SIM when I get to the US, or I just don't use a phone while I'm there unless I have wifi.

I'm in the UK now, and I got a monthly pay-as-you-go SIM from Three. The free roaming is great -- but the coverage in London seems pretty bad. At least compared to Boston, there are a lot more places where I get no signal or one bar. I don't know if that's common across all carriers. But I haven't heard good things about Three's coverage overall. My boss said it used to be bad but now it's fine.

But others say that it's OK in the countryside but bad in London. I subscribed to which.co.uk, and they have a coverage map which backs that up.

I have an iphone 6 that I received secondhand from a friend. It was originally AT&T, but I believe is unlocked as I was able to use it as a 'bring your own phone' with Straight Talk here in the US. Ill be headed over to UK in a couple months, will I be able to use that phone but get a new sim card and get a service provider over there?
If not, I'll sell this phone before I leave.

We took our iPhone 6 (unlocked) to the UK and put in an O2 sim.  It has an app called Tu which can be used wherever you are connected to wifi anywhere in the world, it lets you use your phone, including texting, as if you were in the UK.

Friends and family in the USA use skype/iMessage/Facebook Messenger to converse with us.

For other US numbers (we still have bank and brokerage accounts) we pay for a Skype US number at $39/year and it can be set to be forwarded to our UK number, but that will invoke a 2.3c/minute charge for calls. If we need to make a call then it is usually a toll free number for calling a business. I have the Skype app on my iPhone so easy to call US numbers or to receive a call. I either take the call on the Skype app or let it go to Skype voice mail.

Lots of options these days.

Cool, thanks for the info!

I have looked a ton into the phone situation. And as I'm about to head to the UK for my 3rd long trip (this time permanently-ish) I have finally found something that works for me. Republic Wireless. It's an American phone company that works over wifi connection. So it allows me to keep my American number, call, and text using that number... As long as I have wifi connection on it. I then use mysms to transfer the texts over to my UK phone. So I can text everyone back home without any issues.

American phones have always worked with me if they are unlocked. (And I'm on my 3rd)

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I suggest looking into TruPhone. They are London based and provide a simm card that allows you up to 3 numbers, each in a different country they serve.

I use this to maintain a U.K. number in the USA. The main number must be in your country of residence, but you'll need a new U.K. Number obviously. Then you should be able to port your existing US number and keep it. You could even have a 3rd number. Uniquely the system connects callers to the correct country number, US callers get my US number and U.K. callers get my U.K. number. Various cost plans are available. I've maintained a U.K. number here in the USA for 2 years now. As they're London based and serve many countries I assume it would work in reverse. Worth looking in to.


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