I am tired of paying for roaming, of being location tracked by my provider and running out of SIM slots.
So I have decided to connect some SIM capabilities to my server and set it up as a sort of proxy that I could access over the internet to send regular SMS and make regular calls through the server.
As far as I can tell it seems to be really complicated to do in linux and I just couldn’t find anyway that would actually support sound over calls.
The only solutions I found right now are to get an old phone (not ideal because of the price, battery and reliability) or use something like
https://www.makerfabs.com/maduino-zero-4g-lte-sim7600.html
Which can be connected to the server on the aux and serial ports. This is not too pricey but still seems like a bit much for my needs.
My question is, are there better ways? Really all I need is SMS and calls.
Yea, buts that very different than software VOIP.
I know this first hand by having VOIP-only voice on my phone via a service using Monocles Chat or Cheogram.
Voice calls via my cell plan are much better quality and more consistent than VOIP via an app. I suspect this is because voice calls over 4G/5G are encoded by hardware.
Even Google Voice for calls is pretty awful, which is why I’ve never paid to use it for voice calls.