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Call forwarding while abroad and roaming
A divert is stored on the network against your line, not on your handset, so it stays in place while you are abroad and keeps working even with the phone switched off. What changes is the money. When you are roaming, the forwarded leg may be billed as an international call from wherever you are, which can be considerably more than the same divert costs at home.
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Why the divert keeps working
The rule lives in your network's systems, attached to your number. A caller dialling your UK mobile reaches your UK network first, and the redirect is applied there. Nothing needs your handset to be switched on, in coverage, or in the country.
That is genuinely useful. It means a business number keeps behaving sensibly while you are on a plane, on a beach, or somewhere with no signal at all, without you having to remember to do anything before you leave.
It also means the divert does not know you are abroad. It behaves exactly as it did at home, which is fine for the routing and is the part that catches people out on the bill.
Where the charges come from
The rules vary by network and by destination, and they have changed repeatedly since the UK left the EU roaming arrangements. Rather than trust a general rule, check your specific tariff before you travel — this is the single most common source of an unexpected roaming bill among people who use forwarding.
The pattern to watch for is a forwarded leg billed as though you had made the call from the country you are in. A divert that is free at home because it sits inside your inclusive minutes can fall outside them the moment you are roaming.
Some networks apply roaming restrictions to forwarding specifically, and a few will not forward at all while you are on certain foreign networks. If forwarding matters to your business, this is worth a written answer from your operator rather than an assumption.
What to do before you go
Ask your network two questions in writing: is the forwarded leg charged differently while I am roaming, and does forwarding continue to work in the country I am visiting. Live chat is fine as long as you keep the transcript.
Consider a destination that ends the call rather than answering it. A divert to something that rejects the call immediately has no duration to bill, which limits the exposure whatever the per-minute rate turns out to be. A divert to a colleague who talks for ten minutes does not.
Check what is actually set before you fly with *#61#, so you know what your line will do while you are away rather than finding out from the bill.
If you would rather it did not happen at all while you are away, ##61# cancels the no-answer divert and you can set it again when you land.
Common questions
Yes. The divert is held by your network against your number, not by your handset, so it applies before the call ever reaches you and works with the phone switched off or out of coverage.
It can. The forwarded leg may be billed as an international call rather than coming out of your inclusive UK minutes. The rules differ by network and destination and have changed several times in recent years, so check your own tariff before travelling.
Not for it to keep working. Check *#61# so you know what is set, and check your network's roaming terms so you know what it will cost. If you would rather it did not run while you are away, cancel it with ##61#.
No. Your caller pays to reach your UK number exactly as they always do, and they have no way of knowing where you are or that the call was redirected.
Yes. If the unreachable forwarding rule is enabled, your network forwards the call to us and we send the text — the phone in your pocket plays no part, so it works with the handset off.
Related guides
Setting it up on your network
The codes above are the standard GSM ones and work the same way everywhere. Where networks differ is in what they accept, what their handset menus are called, and what they do after a SIM swap.
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