This may end up being a bit convoluted, so I will do my best to keep it as short as possible and to the point.
I have a US number with Google Fi, have had it for about 8 years.
This is the only reason why I still maintain that one Google account. The benefit is that I only use it when I am in the United States, and when I’m not, I just pause the service and don’t get charged.
However, I feel the string need to completely eliminate Google from my life permanently.
Does anyone know of a service similar to this one? It can be an MVNO or VOIP for my phone, and I would like to port my number as well. I found “phoner”, but I can’t pause the service, so I would be stuck paying a bill I don’t use as much or loosing my number.
If the service is private (not to be confused with anonymous, of course) even better.
JMP.chat is your best choice for the most privacy-oriented VOIP service. Paired with the Cheogram app on FDroid, it’s a great user experience. they can port numbers in and out as well. you can pay with monero/btc/eth.
I am not sure about pausing though, I would ask them what your options are.
Do they have encryption?
encryption for what exactly?
So that the messages aren’t sitting unencrypted on the XMPP servers.
i think you’ll have to ask them, if they even store the messages, i think maybe they just relay them, but it honestly doesnt matter bro, text messages are the most insecure communication on the planet, i think more insecure than JMP’s xmpp servers.
We can’t prove what they do on their devices. We encrypt.
When i tried they didn’t do MMS properly. So YMMV.
worked for me, send and receive
If I can find my message to them, I’ll post what it was. I can’t remember if the messages arrived oddly or if it was sending pictures, etc. etc. It was just some hangup where I couldn’t justify going to it. I would’ve liked to otherwise because like OP I basically only use Google at all for GV.
did you use Cheogram? also reach out to their group chat or support, they are very helpful