Long story short, every local carrier in my country has succumbed to ID verification on prepaid numbers due to a law passing here and they set different deadlines on older phone numbers getting scrapped if they don’t get verified
My country is: Cyprus
Now I’m scrambling what to do, I thought one carrier was at least safe but I was wholly wrong.
I only have an SMSPool account and that’s about it but 20 bucks per 28 days for a extendable rent it is quite the ask especially when I used to maintain a number for 5 bucks a year.
jmp.chat seems to also be an option and potentially silent.link
Either way appreciated the thoughts I am receiving in this little challenging time…
jmp.chat (for the number) with silent.link (for the data only esim) seemed the best option from my searches as you can pay both with crypto, and silent.link has a very good price per gb (atleast compared to other options I could find)
My idea is to use something like silent.link for data, and to get a phone number, I use a VOIP service that’s popular in my country (kompaas.tech to be exact, planning on doing a review on it - it does have phone numbers from many countries, but for now, not Cyprus), rent a phone number from them and pair it up with the open source Linphone app.
So yeah, I also thought about using jmp.chat, but using a US number in my country seems a little far fetched for me. My recommendation is to try to find a VOIP provider that supports Cyprus phone numbers.
First, I wish you were a little more detailed with how you want to use this phone number. Naturally, I would think you’d like to make and receive calls and texts along with anything else one can do with a phone number. Right?
And I am also guessing you don’t mind having a number with a different country code than yours.
Based on these assumptions, I would recommend JMP.chat. It works well. The Cheogram app is great for this. It’s harder to use on iOS. And JMP is affordable enough for all that it offers and you can also make the odd phone call (albeit, you’d have to check the pricing for the country code of the each number you want to dial to see how many minutes you have every month since its different depending on the country).
I’ve been using it for several months now and don’t have any major complaints.
the purpose is to have a phone number not tied to my identity for most other service and my pseudonym accounts.
My local prepaid carriers were serving very well with only needing to top up at least 5 bucks every year. that’s gone now
I was just trying to register with JMP.chat, I coudn’t even get through the payment process, always failing and ended up with “contact support” with no way who exactly or what to give customer support to.
In the end I deposited money to SMSPool and got a rental number from them (SMS was the bare minimum anyway, Calls are a plus for services that require or rather, beg for calling instead of letting me choose SMS cough Viber cough but yeah)
Would you be able to try it again with BTC just to see if it works? JMP is Canadian and I got my number while I was in Canada but don’t think that matters since I paid in Bitcoin.
This is odd that you experienced this. But paying with credit card would mean the number can be associated with your identity. It negates how you wanted to acquire a phone number. I’m guessing you already know that.
also can it? it’s a virtual credit card and even a disposable one, it cant exactly trace back to me I think anyways.
But this isnt the time to debate about it, BTC works and gives an address but yeah…
So, JMP does work for you then? Why didn’t you go with paying in Bitcoin instead? Guess it doesn’t matter since you went ahead with SMS Pool. But if you change your mind, now you know.
I mean I could sign up with proton wallet and go off there paying with bitcoin but yesterday I was pissed and frustrated. got tired and then today tried both to see what it sticks.
I think JMP.chat is better for long-term rentals. That’s what they advertise and tailor to. Contrary to what someone else said, receiving SMS is a first-class feature of theirs unless providers go out of their way to block VoIP numbers (not their fault). Once you’ve established a history with them, you can switch to other upstream providers (“routes”) that won’t show up as issued by a VoIP carrier in carrier lookups. I still found those problematic, but the support is top-notch and goes above and beyond.
I used to use them for my primary number, but I’ve found it difficult to list a US/Canadian number as contact information while being EU-based. Depending on your use case, it’s something to consider.
That said, there are other “proper” KYC-free EU/EEA SIMs available that can be shipped and activated overseas, such as giffgaff. With giffgaff, you can go straight to eSIM; no snail mail is involved. Not to mention, a +44 number is easier to live with in the EU.
