Hi,

Daughter is moving to a new school where she'll have to catch busses etc.  We don't want to give he a mobile phone yet, but wanted to give her a means of contacting us if she needs to.  We thought an Apple watch with a sim card would be a good solution.

I did a bit of research, but maybe not enough.

Today, I went to our local Spark store, and asked about how you set-up an apple watch with its own standalone account.  I know that Spark have an option to use the same number for both and iPhone and an apple watch, but I thought that you needed an iPhone to set it up, but the watch itself has its own sim and therefore could have its own number.  

"Can't be done" said the helpful chap at the Spark store.  He said that when he tried (he admittedly said that it was around a year ago), there was something in Spark's contract with Apple that prevented this - that basically the only option in NZ is the "one number" option, where the watch and phone share a number.

So... this would require me to also get another iPhone, and pay for a wearable plan as well as a mobile plan.  Not great.  I was wondering whether I could get a separate sim, stick it in my phone, set-up the watch against that sim, then revert the sim back to mine... aside from still having to pay for a mobile plan as well as a wearable plan, they guy thought that wouldn't work.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Have you been able to get a apple watch working stand-alone on a spark wearable plan (rather than a spark one-number plan)?

I thought I could follow this (noting that it is use-centric instructions, but...)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211768

Edit - maybe, as per this table, there is no support for Family Setup in NZ.

https://www.apple.com/watch/cellular/#table-family-setup

Still interested in feedback though.