Free Communication

[slowtraveler]

Has anyone figured a way to do this?

I find having a phone number is very convenient, especially one I can use in almost any country in the world.

I pay $25/month for unlimited us talk, international text, $10/gb, and $.20/minute international.

But local plans are $10/unlimited data. If I switch, I'll have to change numbers often as my current plan can not be frozen and getting a new sim deactivates my old sim.

Has anyone found a way to handle low cost or free global communication simply?

[fiby41]

Dual sim?

[Kriegsspiel]

Email & Facebook.

[SavingWithBabies]

WhatsApp seems to be very popular particularly outside of the USA. The key part is to try to decouple your contact information from your cell phone provider. So you need something instead of your phone number to use. There are a lot of choices:

* WhatsApp
* Skype
* Viber
* Line
* Kik Messenger
* WeChat
* Telegram
* VoIP apps using voip.ms for one example
* Email
* Facebook (Messenger)
* ...

In the end, it really depends partly on who is trying to contact you and what they are willing to put up with. So having multiple layers helps. So maybe an app and a dedicated phone number (not from your cell provider). Google Voice was/is great for this although might be US-only. Then you are free to switch up your cell phone provider without changing how people contact you.

[Ego]

Like SWB said above, you can port your number to google voice then use wifi or cheap local data to take the calls using the google voice app. You should be able unlock it after one year for a prepaid phone or two years if it is a contract phone.

If you can deal with having service only when connected to wifi, you can use skype for outgoing calls for free and google voice for incoming calls and texts in both directions, again for free.

[GandK]

If T-Mobile has good coverage in your area, try Mint Sim.

[KevinW]

My inner cipherpunk says: signal.org.

More realistic since you don't need to get others to change their habits so much:
email
Google chat
Facebook messages
Slack
Skype

[slowtraveler]

Thanks for all the ideas. GVoice charges for calls if I am outside of USA but I have it working with WhatsApp.

I got a local number that includes unlimited data for $10/month.

Tango worked well when hangouts failed yesterday.