New Project: International Voice + SMS forwarder

When I moved to France, I got a French phone number.  It works just like an American phone number – I can get calls, SMS (text) messages, and MMS (picture, video, and group) messages.  But it's very expensive for Americans to call or text it.  Most carriers charge about $1-$2 a minute and $0.50 per text and won't even support international MMS.  I don't expect people to call me and spend any more than they're used to.

I want people to be able to call and text me at my old number and have it forward to my new number.  There are services out there that do something like that, but each lacks some feature I need or want.

• Google Voice audio quality is atrocious and depends on a high-bandwidth connection.
• Magic Jack requires a device in your home plugged in, and it's expensive.
• Skype doesn't support SMS forwarding.
• ring.to will forward phone calls to US numbers and can receive SMS, but usability seems terrible.
• Many other services charge a base rate of a few bucks a month ($5-$30), plus a high per-minute voice rate ($0.10+)

So, that means it's time to build my own.  My requirements are:

1. Cheap ($5 or less per month, $0.05 per minute or less)
2. International voice forwarding
3. Good audio quality with minimal delay
4. SMS forwarding, either direct or via email
5. MMS forwarding would be nice.
6. The ability to reply via SMS or MMS would be great.

My original plan was to use a service called CallWithUs, which allows you to set up call forwarding and has great international rates.  I'd port my phone number to Google Voice and then have that forward to my CallWithUs number, which would forward to my French number.  Google Voice has good SMS and MMS support (and can forward calls without getting their poor audio quality in the way), so I started working on that.  It seemed convoluted, but it made sense.

I set up CallWithUs and had it forward to my French number.  Then I went to have Google Voice forward to my CallWithUs number and it wouldn't let me forward.  A post on the Google Voice product forums went unanswered, so I gave up on that.  As is always the case with Google, you get what you pay for.  Too bad I already paid for a number on CallWithUs.

I was at the AWS re:Invent conference a few weeks ago and met some guys from Twilio, a company that aims to make voice, SMS, and MMS internet-friendly.  They mostly target much bigger users who have frequently changing voice and messaging needs, but they have low entry-level pricing and developer-friendly documentation.  I signed up, and got started.

The general process to port in my US phone number, set up call forwarding, and set up SMS forwarding.  For now I'll just have it forward SMS messages to my email.  In the future I might add the ability to reply via email to texts, forward MMS messages to my email, and maybe even support replying via email with MMS messages.

I've only started porting in my US phone number, and I've followed the directions for international call forwarding, so we'll see what happens when the port request goes through.

Next up: International Call Forwarding