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>Total cost for phone and 1000 SMS messages is <$100. That's a good plan. Tracfone is roughly $10 a month for a smartphone, but what I wish existed was (a) a

>Total cost for phone and 1000 SMS messages is <$100. That's a good plan. Tracfone is roughly $10 a month for a smartphone, but what I wish existed was (a) a really cheap device and plan that was SMS-only and (b) people would only use SMS. I'm damn sick of Fidelity leaving messages for no doubt wondrous investment advice and robocalls for appliance and car warranty programs. That's 99% of the voice calls that I get.

mcny 5y ago
Assuming you are in the US or want a US number, I recommend Google Voice and turn on spam protection. While the SMS integration is going away soon, you will still be able to use (I think) SMS from within the app and while the terms of service disallow automation, my understanding is that is mostly only for outgoing texts (they don't want Google Voice users spamming the world) rather than incoming (I don't see why Google Voice would be against you doing whatever you want with the texts you receive). I suspect the reason why carriers allow these spam calls and texts is they make money from all calls and texts and have no incentive to fix things.
- peterburkimsher 5y ago
  "While the SMS integration is going away soon" - thank you for the warning! https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/03/09/google-voice-wont-forward-text-messages-to-outside-numbers-much-longe https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/03/09/google-voice-wont-f... I use SMS-via-email very frequently, and was rather worried. Thankfully that will stay. SMS forwarding to a local number's SMS hasn't been possible for me anyway, because my local number is not in the US. At one point I had a setup with Google Calendar forwarding my emails to SMS, but that got shut down in 2019 (to my dismay). https://www.ghacks.net/2018/11/19/google-removes-sms-notifications-from-google-calendar/ https://www.ghacks.net/2018/11/19/google-removes-sms-notific...
cheezymoogle 5y ago
Here's a solution for $60/year, plus the cost of whatever budget Android device you want or have on hand: A year of unlimited talk/text from Liberty Wireless (a T-Mobile MVNO) costs $60.^1 Then, use call barring/do not disturb to disable incoming calls and USSD codes^2 to turn off call forwarding. You now have a phone number that effectively only supports SMS. I'd also recommend going with this plan if you are addicted to the Internet and just want a phone, but don't want to pay through the nose for something like the Punkt^3. As far as only using SMS, sending/forwarding emails through SMS is doable (for now), so if your people's comms can be converted to email, you can use SMS for those as well. Unfortunately, the naive solution of sending outgoing mail requires MMS (and therefore data), but you can send SMS to a Google Voice number, for example, which can be set up to forward a copy of the message to an email, which can then be used for triggering control events locally. YMMV. --- 1 - https://www.ebay.com/itm/174582899616 https://www.ebay.com/itm/174582899616 2 - https://www.t-mobile.com/support/plans-features/self-service-short-codes https://www.t-mobile.com/support/plans-features/self-service... 3 - https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/ https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/

mcny 5y ago

Assuming you are in the US or want a US number, I recommend Google Voice and turn on spam protection. While the SMS integration is going away soon, you will still be able to use (I think) SMS from within the app and while the terms of service disallow automation, my understanding is that is mostly only for outgoing texts (they don't want Google Voice users spamming the world) rather than incoming (I don't see why Google Voice would be against you doing whatever you want with the texts you receive). I suspect the reason why carriers allow these spam calls and texts is they make money from all calls and texts and have no incentive to fix things.

peterburkimsher 5y ago
"While the SMS integration is going away soon" - thank you for the warning! https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/03/09/google-voice-wont-forward-text-messages-to-outside-numbers-much-longe https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/03/09/google-voice-wont-f... I use SMS-via-email very frequently, and was rather worried. Thankfully that will stay. SMS forwarding to a local number's SMS hasn't been possible for me anyway, because my local number is not in the US. At one point I had a setup with Google Calendar forwarding my emails to SMS, but that got shut down in 2019 (to my dismay). https://www.ghacks.net/2018/11/19/google-removes-sms-notifications-from-google-calendar/ https://www.ghacks.net/2018/11/19/google-removes-sms-notific...

cheezymoogle 5y ago

Here's a solution for $60/year, plus the cost of whatever budget Android device you want or have on hand: A year of unlimited talk/text from Liberty Wireless (a T-Mobile MVNO) costs $60.^1 Then, use call barring/do not disturb to disable incoming calls and USSD codes^2 to turn off call forwarding. You now have a phone number that effectively only supports SMS. I'd also recommend going with this plan if you are addicted to the Internet and just want a phone, but don't want to pay through the nose for something like the Punkt^3. As far as only using SMS, sending/forwarding emails through SMS is doable (for now), so if your people's comms can be converted to email, you can use SMS for those as well. Unfortunately, the naive solution of sending outgoing mail requires MMS (and therefore data), but you can send SMS to a Google Voice number, for example, which can be set up to forward a copy of the message to an email, which can then be used for triggering control events locally. YMMV. --- 1 - https://www.ebay.com/itm/174582899616 https://www.ebay.com/itm/174582899616 2 - https://www.t-mobile.com/support/plans-features/self-service-short-codes https://www.t-mobile.com/support/plans-features/self-service... 3 - https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/ https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/