International Travel; Wi-Fi Calling in Conjunction with Local Data-Only eSIM

[msuberly]

I have an iPhone SE (2020) with Visible (not plus) service.  I understand there is no Visible service outside the US, Mexico, and Canada.  In the past when I travel abroad, I used Airalo to purchase an eSim for the country or region that I'm visiting.  Airalo sells data-only plans; they do not have a phone number.  In settings, I disabled my "Primary" line (Visible) and enabled my "Travel" line (whatever local company Airalo sells).

It never occurred to me to use Visible's Wi-Fi calling when abroad.  Is it possible to use Visible's Wi-Fi calling without disabling the local eSIM "Travel" line?  Or do I have to toggle the two lines back and forth?

[RyanBlakeIT]

Hi @msuberly - You are spot on!  You can use Visible as long as you set up WiFi calling in advance (to avoid any troubles when you’re international).  You’ll want to leave both services active and when your phone app asks what service to use to dial out, select Visible (NOTE: You probably won’t get prompted if it’s a data only line, but there’s still a chance you might as even data only lines have a number assigned to them, just not necessarily Visible to you 🙂 ).

[Mephisto2u]

Ryan, I'm using an iPhone 12 pro with a Visible+ SIM and have an Airalo eSIM.  What specific setting do I need to set on the primary line (Visible) and Airalo data-only setting in order to use iMessage and to make/receive phone calls over wifi?  For example, if I enable wifi calling on the primary Visible line, will my phone use the Airalo data as the "wifi" to make and receive calls?

[Mephisto2u]

Forgot one more question: Under setting>>Cellular the first option is "Cellular Data" so when I'm in the US, that's toggled to Primary (Visible) and Default Voice Line is Primary (Visible).  Will I need to change the Cellular Data to Airalo when I arrive in France (I assume so).  What about the default Voice Line?  Do I leave that as Primary (Visible) since I'll be wifi calling?

[RyanBlakeIT]

Your assumptions are spot on.  You would set up the data to be Airalo when in France, but leave Visible as the default voice line so you can still send and receive SMS messages and make phone calls using the WiFi feature.  Again, make sure you have the WiFi feature enabled before leaving the states.  Hope this helps and hope your trip goes well!

[msuberly]

From my experience in Spain this summer, I was not able to have the cellular data set to Airalo and have the voice remain on Visible. It was either one or the other. If it helps, I used an iPhone SE (2020) running the latest OS at the time. 

Periodically, I switched back to Visible while on WiFi to receive SMS messages or make phone calls back to the United States. At times there was two of us, so one of us could hotspot off the other’s phone’s Airalo plan. 

[RyanBlakeIT]

@msuberly Thanks for sharing this insight.  I incorrectly assumed that Apple would have the same capabilities as my Pixel phone did.  If you have a newer Pixel phone (I had the Pixel 7 at the time), you can set the data to one eSIM and voice/SMS to another eSIM.

[SW]

I was just in Bonaire for 3 months and I also used Airalo for data service, along with many wifi hotspots.  I left my visible line active, had it set to wifi calling enabled, had the Airalo line set as primary.  I could still use iMessage no problem but could only receive messages from non iMessage folks, not reply or send to them.  I would always get an error message. Any thoughts?  I am going back for much longer and really need to keep my US number so trying to figure out if it can work better this time.  Skype no longer allows port-in of numbers and I hate Google Voice for ongoing communications.  I did use that for calls because my Visible account wouldn't let me make calls.