Keep your US phone number active while abroad
Keep your US number while abroad. T-Mobile: 90 days, twice a year, full price. Verizon can't suspend for a long trip. Google may reclaim Voice after 3 months.
Checked against official pages on November 4, 2026. Rules move; when this one does, it goes on the changelog.
| Carrier | Accounts | If you do nothing | Cheapest hold | Roaming for codes | Twelve months |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| T-Mobile | postpaid | A seasonal suspend is a request you make, not a state the line drifts into; it runs up to 90 days per period and is limited to two per rolling twelve months | The full monthly recurring charge for the plan, which continues to bill while the line is suspended | Unverified | Two 90-day suspends at the plan's full monthly rate, plus device payments and protection charges throughout |
| Verizon | postpaid | A consumer line cannot be suspended for a long period abroad; Verizon says so directly on its support page | unverified for a long absence abroad; the $10-a-month suspended-line charge applies to the suspension types Verizon does offer | Unverified | unverified for a year abroad; Verizon's page rules the suspension out for a long stay |
| AT&T | postpaid | unverified for wireless; AT&T confirms a vacation hold exists and carries a monthly fee, but the wireless figures are served by a script we could not read | unverified | Unverified | unverified |
| Google Voice | both | Google states it may reclaim the number if you do not appear to be using the service as intended for a period of 3 months | unverified on price; Google Voice is free, but which parts of it survive a long absence is governed by the inactivity rule rather than by a fee | Unverified | No published charge; the requirement is activity rather than payment |
Keep your US number while abroad on the carrier's terms, not on one national clock. If a bank still texts this number, the line has to stay able to receive, and a carrier suspension does not keep it receiving. T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, and Google Voice each print their own terms.
| Your situation | What the pages we read say | Start with |
|---|---|---|
| A bank or government portal still texts this number | The line has to receive. T-Mobile's seasonal suspension stops messages, Verizon rules out a long suspension abroad, and Google Voice can reclaim a parked number after three months without the uses it names | Hold, park, port or let go, then why OTP SMS fails abroad |
| You are away 90 days or less | T-Mobile's seasonal suspension runs up to 90 days, twice per rolling 12 months, and bills the full monthly charge | T-Mobile |
| You are away a year or more | Verizon's support page says you can't suspend mobile service for a long time out of the country. The line needs a live plan or a parking service whose activity rule you have read | Hold, park, port or let go |
| The phone is on device installments | T-Mobile's page says device payments and protection charges continue during a suspension | T-Mobile |
| The line is a family add-on | On T-Mobile's page, you must be the Primary Account Holder to suspend a line on T-Mobile.com. The other carriers' authorization rules are unverified | T-Mobile |
| The line is already suspended | On T-Mobile's page, a suspended line stops calls, texts, voicemail, and data | T-Mobile |
| You want to park the number | Google Voice's activity rule is three months without the uses it names, and receiving is not one of them | Google Voice |
The T-Mobile support page was re-read on 20 October 2026; the Verizon and Google Voice pages are the ones read on 22 September 2026.
The suspension route, and its real price
The standard advice is to suspend your line for a few dollars a month. On T-Mobile, the suspension exists but the saving does not: "during the seasonal suspension, the full monthly recurring charges will be billed", on top of device payments and protection charges that continue. The suspend is limited to "up to 90 days per suspend period" and "2 seasonal suspensions per rolling 12-month period", so it covers about six months of a year at the full plan price, and the line cannot receive messages while it lasts.
On Verizon the answer is blunter. Its support page rules the case out in one sentence: "no. You can't suspend your mobile service if you are going to be out of the country for a long period of time." The Voluntary Suspension Policy lists what a suspension is for, and it is a lost device, a military deployment, or home internet. A year abroad is not on the list.
AT&T confirms that a hold exists and carries a monthly fee, and its wireless specifics are served by a script rather than as text, so the figures are unverified on our AT&T card rather than guessed at.
The options that are left
If suspending does not do the job, three others do part of it, and they are worth pricing against each other rather than in isolation.
Keep the line on its cheapest plan. The number stays fully alive, messages arrive, and you pay a real monthly bill rather than a holding fee. For a number that has to receive bank codes, this is the route that leaves the message path exactly as it was, which is why the calculation belongs next to bank OTP abroad rather than in a phone-savings article.
Move the number to a service built for holding rather than calling. Google Voice is the common example, and its rule is an activity test rather than a fee: the Acceptable Use Policy says Google "may reclaim your Google Voice number (if you have one) if you do not appear to be making use of the service as it was intended, such as placing calls or sending text messages for a period of 3 months". Receiving is not one of the named uses, which is worth knowing before you park a bank's number there.
Let the number go. When nothing important is tied to it, this is a legitimate answer, and the only one that costs nothing.
Where the American system is thinnest
Guides written for other countries assume two things that a reader here has to supply for themselves. India's regulations set a floor on how long an unused prepaid number survives, and China's national standard fixes how long a canceled number stays frozen; the American protection a number has comes from the terms you agreed to with your carrier, and those terms are what the cards in this cluster quote. A reactivation window with a capped fee, of the kind the Indian regulations provide, is likewise a feature of that system rather than of this one.
That makes the American cluster the place where the decision matters most and the paperwork is thinnest, which is why every figure on these cards is dated and every gap is left visible.
Google Fi abroad (not the same as first activation elsewhere)
Google Fi is a different product from Voice parking, and its international rules are about service use, not a national deactivation clock. Google's Fi help page on using Fi outside the US, read 4 November 2026, requires: "Activate and use your service in the US for at least one day before using it abroad."
| Topic | What that Fi help page says |
|---|---|
| Before first use abroad | Activate and use in the US for at least one day (all SIM types named on the page) |
| Extended use outside the US | Typically about 50 days triggers a warning; international data may suspend about 30 days after that email |
| After international data suspends | Calls and texts can continue; international data waits on significant US data use for at least about 30 days |
| Same as "number gone" | No. Data suspension is not described there as reclaiming the number |
Prepaid MVNO activation geography (Tello, US Mobile) stays on those brand pages, not on this Fi table.
The pages in this cluster
- T-Mobile: the seasonal suspend, its two-per-year limit and the full-charge rule.
- Verizon: why a long stay abroad is not a suspension case, and what the ten-dollar rule does cover.
- AT&T: what is confirmed and what its scripts keep out of reach.
- Google Voice: the three-month activity rule, quoted.
- Google Fi abroad: first-day US use, then international-data limits on the Fi help page above (separate from Voice).
- Then hold, park, port or let go for the decision across all three countries, and all carriers for every verified figure in one table.
- Prepaid activation geography: Tello, US Mobile.