D leaving for France for the semester with a Verizon I Phone. Anybody have experience using a SIM card in France on an I Phone? Verizon tells me they cannot guarantee that it will work. They offer international plans but the plans are suited more for vacationers rather than someone who is moving to another country for 5 months.
Thank you.
What I would do is buy an unlocked phone on ebay for a hundred bucks and buy a pay as you go SIM card in France. SIM cards did not work in my American phone abroad as my carrier locked the phone and would not let me use foreign SIM cards- I had this problem both with Verizon and AT&T. I bought an unlocked iPhone 4 on Ebay for around 90 dollars and bought a 20 dollar SIM card in Spain that I could top up as needed; tried to stay on airplane mode and use Wifi as much as I can. This was by far the cheapest option as the abroad plans American carriers offer are limited and very expensive.
How old is the phone? Verizon can unlock it, but they generally won’t do it until well into the contract.
She definitely needs a local French Simcard. Once unlocked, u can buy one there and swap it out on the iPhone. I’ve done it many times.
This is very helpful information as my D is planning to study in Spain next year. I had a question, Qwerty568 – did you suspend your regular phone service, or what? We have a family AT&T service, and while we plan to do as you suggested with an unlocked phone and the SIM card, I’d like to not pay her AT&T bill as well, or did you keep your other phone to go on apps, read the paper, watch content, etc? Or did you use the unlocked phone for everything? (20th century mother, here…it’s sad, I still have no clue…)
We suspended D1’s service; on each long trip, she used a local pre-paid phone. Those work better/cheaper for local calls there. (Otherwise, the call routes to the US, then back to her country, with fees.) LD to the US can be more $, but many Skype on their laptops for calls home.
I could call her foreign phone, but it cost her minutes.
On a US phone, at the time, we could text at no (or minimal?) charge on both ends.
Verizon is a stickler on this. ATT has cheap plans, but your phone (OP’s) is probably locked to Verizon. I believe ATT can unlock, if you change to their service, but sooo much easier to get a local phone, in our experience.
Besides Skype on a laptop, you/your student can also install apps like Viber and/or WhatsApp to text/voice call for free using wifi on their smart phone. If everyone has iPhones, Facetime (audio or with camera) is also free via wifi.
Cheap local phone also means less risk of theft of an expensive smart phone if your student is in an area where snatch and grab is an issue.
Good time for student to learn that as soon as you’re sitting on a plane with an international destination you should turn off cellular data and roaming. It only gets turned back on when you’ve landed back in the US.
@Naspy58 I suspended my home service with AT&T while I was abroad. The SIM card service I specifically used in Spain was Orange. I did not take my American phone with me; the unlocked phone I had was similar enough to the phone I had at home. Cell phone theft is extremely common in Spain and as my American iPhone was the newest model at the time I didn’t want to risk losing a 700 dollar phone versus the 100 dollar phone I bought.