Three PAYG

[capecoralfl]

I know that the tariffs with Three will be changing soon for international calls but I hope someone can clarify the sim phone number aspect for me.
I have a monthly sim only contract with my unlocked Virgin mobile account (I own the phone) and I have a UK virgin phone number.
I also have a Three sim only (which I only use abroad and I buy a go roaming 30 day package) and I leave that in an old iPhone I own, to use overseas and I have a different UK mobile number for that sim.
This means that I have 2 x UK mobile phone numbers and carry around 2 phones whilst on holiday.
Is it possible to have my Three sim account mobile number updated / changed to have only one number - my Virgin number?
The reason is that some banks etc send a text for security checking and they only have my Virgin number or I may miss calls to my Virgin mobile as I have it turned off whilst abroad to prevent high charges.
I read the Three site but can’t find any guidance.
How do others work this?
Apologies if this rambling post is not explaining my issue!
Many thanks
Nicky

[loldis]

You can't change your number over to 3 without terminating your Virgin contract.

However looking at Virgin Media's site, receiving texts should be free while abroad. They only have a charge listed to send. So you could disable roaming on your phone rather than switching it off completely.

[Sew109]

My understanding is (or when I managed a fleet of phones was) that you can only port to a new contract so you would need to get a pac code from virgin (you can get this via text) get a new PAYG sim and port the number over as the number is ported this will close your virgin account.

The other option is to buy a phone on Amazon’s that takes dual sims this can be done quite cheaply I have a Motorola that does this

[wanye]

a lot of the chinese android phones have dual sim slots (or single sim/sd card. they can often do both) - my xiaomi redmi note 10 can do both. i used it for a while to house my sim and my work mobile number so i didnt have to carry two phones when i was oncall.

have switched back to a single sim pixel 6 phone now, but it was handy while i had it

[capecoralfl]

Thanks for all the replies. It’s just a pain carrying two phones and wish IT was more advanced to be able to cover this. I do switch off my data on my Virgin iPhone sim whilst abroad.
I will continue to use the 2 iPhones for my next overseas trip in January and see if I can still do a go roaming top up on my existing Three sim in my old iPhone to get by.
We are going to NYC next March so we are thinking of getting new iPhone 13’s, which (I believe) can take an esim (have been reading the Dibb thread on this new airalo app) and which can the capability to switch between 2 numbers?) It looks like this would which address my issue.
Many thanks for the feedback!

[loldis]

Yes, if you have a phone with esim capability, you can have a second number that way. I think they added this around iPhone 11 depending how old your phones are, you may already have it available as an option.

Annoyingly, 3 don't have the option to convert to an esim. I was looking at this recently so I could free up the physical sim slot. So you will have to change who you're using for your US data unless Virgin do esim.