Done. See you at Bash in a few weeks.

Great to see you here, and thanks for the question. Short answer, yes. Porting your number to Google Voice solves that problem. Even when we’re back in the US we use GV and Airalo. It’s the cheapest way to have phone service. That said, the connection through GV is a little fragile. Testing works fine, but the call infrastructure isn’t as robust as WhatsApp. We’ve migrated friends and family who call a lot to WhatsApp, so the only calls we get are casual. It’s not really much of a problem.

I’m also careful about which apps I let have access over the cell network (Settings/Cellular for app by app access), to keep data consumption in check, but that’s just good general data hygiene.

Please let me know if you have any other questions. If there’s anything you’d prefer not be public, you can reach me directly through the Contact form. I’ve taken the liberty of adding you to our monthly newsletter, but you can unsubscribe with a click.

We are iPhone users. Currently using AT&T in California. have been for decades. We recently took a trip to Poland. We used Airalo esim. We put Airalo esim as primary. Disable cellular and roaming on At&t esim. The data part worked wonderfully. Fast and reliable. Our issue is texting. Texting iPhone to iPhone users is non-issue. The problem arises when texting Andriod users, both individually and in group thread with both Apple and Andriod users.

We are unable to communicate with Android users. We got frustrated and messed with settings. I believe we turned on roaming and enabled celluar on At&t esim but left Airalo as primary. Things worked. We were able to text back and forth with Android users including sending pictures in text. Few weeks later, my cell bill from AT&T has some hefty charges for those texts!

Question please. Would Google Voice setup as you discuss in your post address this issue? I realize it’s very specific. I m hoping you can shred some light.

It would be so simple if everyone uses Whatsapp! 🙂

Thank you Mark.

Hey, De! Great to hear from you. Your best approach to staying in touch with Stellie while she travels depends a lot on how long she’s going to be gone. Our solution was based on being gone for a long time.

I think the easiest solution for you both might be to just add WhatsApp to your phones and use that while Stellie’s away. It handles voice, video calls, and chat, and uses data rather than a cell plan. It’s very simple to use, and delivers great results.

I think the trick is using Google Voice. Once you port your number over, it will manage phone and text without having to use your local number. But it’s not a thing you can switch on and off. You have to be OK with Google Voice handling your phone number.

The only problem we’ve had is that there are a few services, and I’m thinking of Zelle specifically, that won’t point to a VOIP number, which is what your number becomes once it’s ported to Google Voice. And there can be a slight lag as GV switches calls to you that makes it seem like you’re being robocalled. But for the most part, it’s been remarkably smooth.