Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by throw322342 1581 days ago
This is an interesting idea. I looked into this before when I was traveling internationally, but I ran into issues when trying to set it up with services like Twilio.

1. Many companies send from SHORT code numbers, and not all VOIP providers can accept them.

2. Many companies will look up the number type and only send to cellphone numbers.

3. If you use a SIM modem, some phone companies will check the IMEI and terminate your contract if it's not in a cellphone.

1 comments

Thanks for the info! Super useful. I came across this Twilio support article:

https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223181668-Can-T...

Looks like you need to get the feature enabled, so you can receive SMS from shortcodes. You also need a number in the same country as the shortcode, so users of the service would need to indicate which country the number is for. This would most likely be fine, as I think most people only use 1 number in 1 country anyway.

Hopefully this would solve (1)

Twilio allows you to register mobile numbers, so I think (2) would be ok.

3. I'm not intending to use any hardware, so I think I could disregard this limitation, although it's useful to know anyway!