Help understanding eSIM, adding Fi as second carrier on P6P?

[harbinger007]

I hope this is okay to post here. I've searched FAQs on Google's Fi page and searched elsewhere and just don't seem to get the information that makes this clear to me.

I have a P6P purchased from Verizon, still locked for another few weeks. I have no immediate need for this but I recently traveled to Italy and my hotspot plans didn't work out and then Verizon locked me out of my account for some reason so I couldn't activate international services. Still had a great time but this was an inconvenience I don't plan to go through again. My wife and I plan to travel a lot in the next 20 years (she retired last year, helps me on our farm). I see Google's Fi program offers services in 200 countries with reasonable rates.

Verizon generally works very well for me when in the US but there are always some weak spots so I thought maybe having Fi as a second carrier through my eSIM would be a good option and then I could use Fi when traveling out of the country. Is this possible? Google shows I can suspend service and I might do that but the cost isn't that much ($20 for Flex) to just keep it always active.

Is this possible and sound feasible? If anyone else here has been doing this, I'd appreciate how you went about it and how it has worked for you. Thanks.

 

[dmxjago]

I use Fi as my primary and use it when I travel all the time. With any of their plans you can pause it on demand when you don't need to use it and resume when you want. For your use case you could just simply resume the day you travel because it's pretty much instant.

Currently I'm not using dual plans but Fi for me is on the eSIM not SIM card slot so i suspect this will work perfectly for you. You could check with Google Fi Support to confirm.

 

[harbinger007]

Thank you. Do you know if my phone being locked makes a difference on being able to add Fi on the eSIM? That doesn't matter much for my current phone now since I can wait until Verizon unlocks it, but it would make a difference the next time I purchase a new phone.

 

[CHILLYWILL_95831]

Thank you. Do you know if my phone being locked makes a difference on being able to add Fi on the eSIM? That doesn't matter much for my current phone now since I can wait until Verizon unlocks it, but it would make a difference the next time I purchase a new phone.

You will need to contact your service provider to activate your eSim and that can happen on a carrier locked phone. I did exactly that with mine through T-Mobile!