It'll probably help if you name the two countries
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026
29 points (100.0% liked)
No Stupid Questions
48939 readers
1108 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Hi, yeah sorry I thought since this is a universal problem it wouldn't matter too much, but I need the remote number for Brazil and Colombia, while I reside in the EU
It is not universal problem. In EU for example there is universal roaming. So you can use your home sim card in destination country without extra costs. However there are some limitations with this approach.
I have a prepaid e-sim that I use for my second country phone number. I had to put 5 euros on it and pay 5 euros extra or something, and after that I only pay when I use up the money. Only disadvantage is you have to use it once every two months or they deactivate it.
That sounds perfect, did you buy the prepaid SIM when you were over there or did you manage to get it shipped to where you live ? And do you recommend the e-sim provider you have ?
I bought it while I was there, but online, so I don't see a reason it wouldn't have worked elsewhere. E-sim don't need to be shipped, you just get an email and you need a phone that can handle an e-sim.
Since this would be the phone number that you'd rely upon to have continued access to those government services, I wouldn't skimp on the expense: consider the monthly charge for a domestic phone plan as a cost of citizenship or residency.
Supposing you find and set up an eSIM with a domestic carrier in that country, then one which supports WiFi calling would allow you to receive SMS/MMS from anywhere, provided that your phone also supports WiFi connectivity.
As an aside, WiFi connectivity was greatly useful when I was traveling in Japan, since I'd be back at the hotel with WiFi in the evening, which conveniently overlapped with USA West Coast time, so calls were perfectly natural.
You're right, a stable number is pretty important, and since said country allows me to buy some things for a cheaper price (namely online services), I agree it's only fair to pay for a reliable eSIM. I just didn't know if there was a more obvious way, but reading the coments, this seems like the go-to !
Thanks for the advice.
The countries in question can vary the process greatly.
I live in a country where I pay my monthly charge for my sim, and I hold a number in another country where if you have a positive balance on a prepaid number, even if it’s not connected, it stays active.
I also believe so long as it’s connected (even via roaming) most countries won’t shut it off.
I have used Voip.ms to park my number in Canada while I lived abroad. I could still receive text messages most of the time. If not, the back up “receive a phone call” option would work.
I saw an advertisement on tv for Saily. It might be useful to you?
Thanks for the recommendation, if anyone is interested, I checked and indeed their cheapest plan goes for 18,49€ per month, and covers both countries (Latin America package), or 11,49€/month for Colombia and 8,99€ for Brazil, for a combined total of 20,48€. So I'll probably go with the Regional package if I choose the e-sim route.
I'll check later with a VPN to see if its cheaper in local currency
Is Google Voice an option?
Only for US numbers, I think.
Ah, I thought they offered service in some other countries with those countries respective phone numbers/ranges.