I’m planning on activating a new amaysim service, porting out from Telstra post paid, whilst overseas. Amaysim hasn’t been clear on whether this will work.
Does anyone here have any experience with porting your number out to amaysim whilst out of the country?
I’m all for straightforward/definite answers but can you provide a bit more context please? I already have an amaysim account with a sim that works overseas so why would activating a new one not work?
I don't think it would be a prob, as long as your current Telstra post paid has international roaming and can receive text msg (for the port confirmation from Amaysim) while overseas? Just need to make sure that you bring your new Amaysim sim with you.
I thought the same thing so not sure why the first reaction above was that it won’t work?
Dont think it would work as you cant activate roaming on amaysim while overseas. Been caught out with this before..
Let us know if you can though - would be interested to know if they have fixed this glitch. Imho amaysim do try to help but dont always understand their own systems.. Good luck
Gotcha. Perhaps the fact that I already have a dormant postpaid amaysim could work in my favour? I have an account with them and from my previous experience, any new prepaid will be activated against that same account. So perhaps if I set my account to have roaming enabled, this should work for any additional numbers as well?
No, the settings are per SIM.
Dont think it would work as you cant activate roaming on amaysim while overseas.
What do you mean exactly? If you turn your phone off when you leave the country, amaysim wouldn't even know that you have left. Even if you have, the lack of roaming already being on will prevent the phone from registering on the overseas network so I don't know that would make any difference. The only problem I can see with SIM activation overseas is that settings can't be pushed to a phone overseas but you can always enter those manually, most of them on most phones except for iFruit phones and with new-ish phones they pretty much have all the settings already via carrier bundles. You can't receive calls or texts from the MVNO either until roaming is on but I;'ve never had anything critical that you need respond to and I can't imagine activation would fail because those calls or messages don't connect. I agree with daBaz so long as you can receive the port verification message and do whatever is required I don't see a problem.
I want to do the same thing - anyone know if it is possible to activate an amaysim SIM card, with a nine number and turn in international roaming prior to leaving australia. Then - when overseas port my Telstra number to my amaysin account?
What’s a ‘nine number’?
Typo - a new number
I just had an online chat with amaysim about this and they say I can activate and port the number while overseas. I can do the whole thing from overseas. Just buy the eSim and port when I’m ready no need to be in Australia.
Thanks, looks like you had more luck than me with their chat!
How are you going to buy an esim though? Don’t you need to start off with one of their standard $2 physical sims?
No you can just do it all online, looks like the info on their FAQ is out of date, which I said to them in the chat. - I got an email transcript of the chat. I’ll find out at the end of July, when I’m in Canada and it either works or it doesn’t lol
Just to answer my own question for others who may have this same question, it worked! So I left the country on an expensive JB Hifi Telstra contract and took with me a $2 amaysim sim. Once my Telstra contract expired, I did the transfer to amaysim from my amaysim portal and it all went fine. As an existing amaysim customer, no further ID checks where needed either. So now I’m on a $10 PAYG plan which lasts 365 days (so a cheap way to keep my line active for the odd verification sms). I even noticed that amaysim is rolling out wifi calling now so I may be able to use it in the future for free calls to Australia as well (which has been great with the Telstra service I’ve had for the past few months).
Thanks for giving us an update on this, OP!
I even noticed that amaysim is rolling out wifi calling now so I may be able to use it in the future for free calls to Australia as well (which has been great with the Telstra service I’ve had for the past few months).
Unlike Telstra, Optus does not currently permit overseas IP addresses to use WiFi calling. Using a VPN tunnel back to Australia might be away around this. As VoWiFi apparently uses its own form of VPN your phone OS would need to be able to stack VPNs or you would need to use an external VPN. AFAIK, Android doesn't allow stacking of VPNs out of the box. I've no idea about iPhones or other phone OSs.
Sounds complicated! From what I’ve experienced, many European carriers who allow WiFi calling still count these calls towards your ‘call minutes’ or ‘call credit’, something I didn’t realise was still a thing in 2022 (maybe we’re spoiled in Oz with unlimited calls on most plans).
Optus (and Vodafone) are hoping that you'll spend money on roaming. It's surprising that Telstra is the one that allows WiFi calling from overseas - maybe that something to do with the fact that they didn't offer roaming for a while because of changes to their systems I'm guessing.
@Stingo: Yes, and it’s only for calls to Australia where it’s free from abroad (so from Country X to Australia, not from Country X to Y). I guess with their expensive plans, this way they give you some sort of value for having a Telstra service.
Sorry, can you please share the process in more details ? so when you port Telstra to amaysim you just did it from the $2 Sim, as an existing customer not a new customer? Then straight after that you recharged with the $10? Could you have done it without the recharge in order to keep the number active for 365 days? Thanks, sorry, trying to sort the same thing out now.
I received the following text message last week, following amaysim’s new policy around overseas roaming:
International Roaming is now active for your mobile service however you currently don't have an International Roaming product so will only be able to receive incoming SMS' while overseas. Use the amaysim app to add a roaming product, to turn off roaming or if you need other services while roaming.
That’s great I thought as the key reason I still have this service is for 2FA, so SMS is all I need. I therefore kept my AU number on for a while and started to get a few incoming calls. I answered some (mainly call centres) and to my surprise, no charges on my bill. I was at home at the time so could it be that amaysim is also allowing international wifi calls through?
I answered some (mainly call centres) and to my surprise, no charges on my bill. I was at home at the time so could it be that amaysim is also allowing international wifi calls through?
I wouldn't think so. Unless you had a VPN back to Australia at the time then it shouldn't have been possible according to what has been promulgated. You could always try and call some Australian paid and freecall numbers to test some more and whether WiFi calling or roaming is being used.
Won't work. /thread