OK, the original plan was to convert my contract, pay-monthly account to a simple Pay As You Go account. After a lot of calls from Mum, and a few expensive international ones from me, I received the SIM card, registered my details, swapped the numbers over, and started the activation process.
Then Orange got round to informing me that PAYG SIM cards don’t work in Kazakhstan – there is no roaming agreement. Quite why this didn’t become apparent previously is a mystery, but there you go. The new plan is for me to get a Kazakh SIM card, and when I return to the UK, hopefully this Xmas, use the Orange PAYG SIM card there.
Summary is, my phone number won’t work until mid-December, and then only whilst I’m in the UK…