Digits & Plans: Cell Phones

Remember the time when you could dial a phone number that you know by heart to call your close friends and family? Nowadays, sadly I can only remember 3 numbers: my own, my husband's, and my childhood house...and that's on a good day! For most of us, we've had our numbers for many years and it's almost a part of our identity and we really didn't like the idea of giving up our digits forever. However, it also doesn't make financial sense to pay for Canadian "premium" cell phone service plans that can't be used while abroad but it's hard to completely say goodbye to our Canadian cell phone numbers during our year away. It's also increasingly common for banking, work, and other services to require 2 step verification codes that are sent by SMS to one's phone and we need to keep accessing these services while away. For these reasons, we started looking into alternative options and services in order to keep our home numbers but with minimal costs.

We originally were hoping to keep the number with a Canadian providers, however there is no e-sim option available if we chose the prepaid/pay-as-you-go plan.

I started looking into VoIP/Virtual number services such as TextNow, Fongo and TossableDigits.

TextNow is a Waterloo based company that offers free talk and text through wifi. I love its user interface which is easy to use and very intuitive. Sadly, Canadian carriers are concerned about how MVNO will impact their business, so the company currently doesn't support transferring Canadian number into their service. See more info here on their blog regarding Canadian services.

Fongo is a VoIP services. Fongo uses Voice-Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to place and receive calls and send and receive messages using your existing data plan (3G/4G) or nearby WiFi connection and Fongo’s nationwide network. Its APP user interface needs improvement. The biggest drawback for us is that SMS Short codes are not currently supported by the Fongo Texting Service. It is not possible to text short codes, or receive short code SMS (also known as premium rate SMS) with Fongo Mobile. 2-Stage SMS authentication with an activate Texting Subscription should work as long as the sender is not using short codes.

We ended up choosing TossableDigits as it supports transferring Canadian numbers and SMS short codes. Even though the call forwarding and calling rate isn't the cheapest and the UI also isn't the greatest, we found that we actually don't use cellphone to make phone calls much anymore and more often text or use a messaging app. It's a good service to "park" the number.

The porting process was easy (see their how-to article here). Once you sign up for an account, check if your number is portable then start the process!

For a Canadian number, it will take 5-10 business days for the porting to complete. You will also need to response to a text from your carrier to authorize it, so make sure you keep your service active and phone on!

Read more about Fongo vs TextNow here by CBC.