In my original post from 2023, How To Keep Your US Phone Number While Living Abroad – FOR FREE!, I share how we ported our US phone numbers from AT&T to Google Voice so that we could keep them and continue to use them (FOR FREE) after our move to Portugal.
After two years of living in Portugal, we’ve been able to use our US numbers via Google Voice with very few hiccups.
Here are some things that we’ve encountered:
Changing Phones
Mr. Scribbles got a new phone in late 2023 and we freaked out that this might break our Frankenstein-phone-creation.
The problem arises if you only have a Google Voice number, no other linked numbers. In this case, when you set up Google Voice, you selected the option Settings > Calls > Make and Receive Calls > Prefer Wifi and Mobile Data. When you get a new phone, your preferences on the new device are set by default to “Use carrier only.” If you reset your preferences to “Prefer Wifi…” your new phone should be able to place and receive calls as before, without a separate linked number.
Phone Doesn’t Ring / Can’t Make Calls
Sometimes my phone won’t ring when someone calls, but I’ll see a missed call and receive their voicemail. When I go to call them back, I’ll receive the below message “Just one more thing…Before making a call, please verify your own phone number.” Because I don’t have a linked number, I need to make sure I’m connected to WiFi then go to Settings > Calls > Make and Receive Calls > Prefer Wifi and Mobile Data. If my phone won’t connect to WiFi, I restart my phone and then it works.
Review
We are happy with Google Voice. It has worked for our primary purpose, to receive 2FA text message. That said, the above hiccups have started to happen more frequently, which is irritating but not insurmountable. But because we don’t use Google Voice as our primary method of communicating AND we continue to receive our 2FA text messages, we are not worried. Right now. The only other bummer is that you can’t send videos and the ones you receive are of poor quality. So we use WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and iMessage for sharing higher bandwidth communications.
We will continue to monitor the market for replacement options in the event that Google Voice stops working for us. If anyone has an alternative method for receiving 2FA, that doesn’t include maintaining a contract with a US phone carrier, LET ME KNOW at info@savorandscriblle.com.
