Virtual phone number in Canada
 

I am moving out of Canada and would like to keep my current Canadian cell phone number active by switching it to a Virtual Phone Number provider that will allow me to forward calls via VoIP to an overseas phone number or a VoIP / SIP client.

Found a few providers but they either look sketchy, or don't offer number-in portability.

Very grateful for any recommendations!

Check out voip.ms

https://voip.ms/en/phone-numbers/canada

I have Vonage at both my Canadian and US homes. They offer virtual numbers for a bunch of countries, including Canada and the US for $4.99. I have a US virtual at my home in Canada.

https://support.vonage.com/articles/...al-Numbers-848

+1. Several friends and I went this route when we moved away from Canada. Getting SMS forwarded too is a nice bonus.

I use this.

https://www.fongo.com/

As I like to make calls to Canada for free wherever I am. All calls are free really. Incoming texts are free.

I'll give another thumbs up for VOIP.MS. Awesome service, really easy to use, highly flexible, and fairly low cost.

I'll join the chorus ... I've been a VoIP.ms customer since 2011 and have nothing but praise for their feature set and low cost. The few times I've needed support from them, issues were resolved quickly and to my satisfaction.

+1 for voip.ms. Cheapest to maintain, best quality if you have the right SIP set-up on your device.

Fongo will forward to certain Canadian numbers for free but in order to make or receive calls you need to run their app, which is buggy.

VoIP. ms is much more flexible if you're looking for SIP functionality.

As an update, I have been with Fongo for a year now and have very little to no problems.

I buy their Global SMS subscription and when I send SMS to most countries, it works fine. A few more exotic ones (Colombia, Brazil, India) did not receive my SMS from Fongo, but I always got theirs.

Can I PM you about your experience with Fongo and a ported over Canadian number and what exactly is included?

TIA

How are people texting from their mobiles with VOIP.MS?

Able to send and receive SMS on your handset over IP would be great.

At the present time, the Canadian number that I have had for almost 30 years is ported to a virtual service that I can program to call forward ($$$overseas) or take a voicemail which is sent to my email within 5 minutes.

Does anyone have experience with Viber? It has a lot of features but I can't port a number over. Call forwarding to the Viber number works but I will be paying for the minutes on a forwarded call.

voip.ms +1 from me

Can send texts from sms.voip.ms

Their support for SMS includes a facility where you can send a text from from a web page, but only to entries you've created in your VoIP.ms address book. Not a good universal solution, unfortunately. If someone sends a text to your VoIP.ms DID, though, it will be forwarded to the email address you supply in your SMS configuration. If you reply to that email it will send your reply back to them as an SMS message.

There may be SIP clients supporting SMS for phones, but I've never had much luck with those.