I've been using JMP.chat for awhile now, and I have to say that unless something changes significantly for the worse over there, I may never use anything else for phone service again. It's basically a bridge between the telephone network and XMPP. When you sign up you choose a phone number (or port in a number you already own), and associate that with an XMPP account. From then on, XMPP messages turn into SMS or MMS (and vice versa), you can call any telephone number with a special JID and likewise receive telephone calls in XMPP clients that support voice chat. On Android, your JMP.chat/XMPP account becomes a calling service, so you can even ditch your cell service entirely and use JMP.chat (meaning you can type a number on the stock dialpad and transparently make phone calls using your JMP account). JMP.chat's perferred client, cheogram, handles the telephone number<->JID conversions for you so you don't have to think about it much. If you have phone contacts, you can call them from cheogram nearly transparently (I find you still have to have a bit of understanding of XMPP so this might not work for your boomer parents). You can use a self-hosted XMPP server to act as your side of the bridge. JMP.chat handles the telephony side, so you do have to trust them on that one. Cost is $3/month for basic service (I think 150 minutes of talk but unlimited texts). The net result is that you can do all your telephony in an XMPP client, and it looks almost the same as instant messaging. If you're in a situation where you have access to wifi all the time, you can ditch cell phone service completely (I'm not so lucky, but I did severely downgrade my cell phone service since I don't need it for much more than data anymore). If your XMPP server is configured to do so you can switch between a computer-based XMPP client and a phone client and see all the same messages. You can also make XMPP bots that handle phone calls and SMS/MMS messages if you're so inclined.

(#o6ifc2q) There are lots of quality of life improvements handling phone this way. For instance, I have a phone number I've had for 20-odd years at this point. I receive something like 3-5 unsolicited calls per day and a few unsolicited SMS a week at that number. It must be in every spammer/scammer database on Earth at this point. However, since I've had this number so long and given it to so many people, I want to keep it. Many XMPP clients give you pretty good control over blocking; you also have the ability, if you want to write some code, to block arbitrary *patterns* of phone numbers. And since it's all handled in one app, you can block calls and SMS/MMS messages from a phone number in one place. All of that has meant an improvement in my life--I can keep this old number, and even though spam gets through sometimes I have a much easier way to deal with it than text clients and dialers on Android give you.

(#o6ifc2q) @abucci Interesting... 🤔

(#o6ifc2q) @prologic I believed they're limited to the US and Canada right now but iirc they intend to eventually expand globally. Definitely to Europe.