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Comment by Johnny555 | Hacker News Reader

If you want a stable phone number, use Google Voice (or another VOIP equivalent).

When I travel to Europe/Asia, I just buy a local SIM and use Google Hangouts to make and receive calls over IP. I treat my cell phone numbers as disposable, and indeed,I've been through 4 different prepaid carriers in the past few years, but none of my friends and family noticed any change since they all call via my GV number. (well, in reality, almost no one calls these days except my parents, everyone else SMS's... I don't even answer the phone if it's not from one of my contacts since 95% of the time it's a telemarketer, and if it's not, they can leave me a message and Google will transcribe it)

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How does that work for all the services that refuse to accept VoIP numbers nowadays? Don't they still need your cell phone number, which keeps changing?

I ported my cellular number to GV a few years ago and haven't had it refused by any service that needs a phone number.

Hm, I've definitely seen a lot. First one that comes to my mind is Telegram [1], but it's not one I use personally. I've run across it before personally too, but I'm forgetting for what services...

[1] http://telegram.wiki/troubleshooting:ri

GroupMe is another example that doesn't work.

GroupMe worked fine for me using my GV number, they SMS'ed me the validation PIN. I didn't even use my ported cell number, just my original GV number.

I have a very old GV number (at least 7 years old), so maybe not all numbers are flagged as VOIP.

What other VOIP equivalents are there for those of us who don't live in the US?

I have a second number from Anveo.com that I can forward to any number in the world. They have voice mail and smart call flow routing so you can do things like forward unanswered calls to another number, set up a mini IVR system (i.e. "Press '1' to call me on my mobile", "Press '2' to call my mom", etc.). They do SMS forwarding for some countries, as well as web based SMS.

They also have a nice service that lets you purchase a number in a foreign country and forward it to your own number. My relatives live overseas so I bought a local number in their country that they can use to call me for free. it only costs me a few dollars/month.

None of these features are unique to Anveo, but I've been using them for a few years and have been quite happy with the service.

if you live in the UK or Spain (where Google voice doesn't exist) O2 / Telefonica does something very similar, you can use their service TuGO and you can keep your phone number, receive and send SMS and calls all through internet and you don't even need your sim, or a phone, you can use it on a Browser or an app for Android and iOS (iPad included), on any network, wifi or some disposible sim. The advantage over GV (apart from not being US only) is that whilst you can use it without a sim, you do get the sim for those services that refuse Voip, you get the best of both world. Also TuGO is given at no extra cost, as long as pay monthly you have it.

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