This is the sole complaint I have with Signal (and one of many complaints with Telegram).
It's impossible to create an anon account, which I imagine would be very important for someone needing a secured messaging service in mainland China, for example.
I have managed to keep a phone number for almost double-digit years. It would be amazing to not have to use my telco as the source of identity for my Signal communications. If Signal could change this one thing and allow (or maybe somehow prefer?) it to be linked to a mobile number it would have real feature advantages over all of the other random chat apps for phones. Signal call quality is jaw droppingly good, but thats hard to sell at the gas station or water cooler.
As it stands people I refer to Signal usually have a preferred chat app (which is unfortunately often facebook messenger) or SMS. IOS people have no reason to use it other than the amazing privacy benefits, and android people seem to be on whatever their mom isn't.
I would pay to not have to use my phone number for this service.
Im asking for an alternative canonical source of identity other than an extremely trustworthy telco.
Some other conglomerated examples are: Scanning a QR code in person to initiate discovery, or querying other data in the phone's "contacts" PIM app for example, email, or more imaginatively, keybase, or maybe mail out QR codes to residential address for a nominal fee?