alt Hacker NewsGoogle Fi can receive all SMS 2 factor messages on Wi-Fi including short codes. It doesn't even require that your phone is on, you can get them in any web browser on any device even if your phone is destroyed. One of my favorite features.
You can get service starting at $20 per month. Fi used to have good service in some mountain areas too, with US Cellular. Not sure what's going on with US Cellular right now though. Some kind of half acquisition by T-Mobile.
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Are you able to use rcs and "messages for web"?
The last time I checked if you wanted "cellphone is off" texting/voice (basically the old hangouts), you had to enable "fi syncing" which disabled rcs features. Is that still true? What url do you goto to do texts/voice? (i see hangouts.google.com redirects to google chat).
Google Fi charges $10 PER 1GB of data. US Mobile is cheaper and offers the top 3 providers in the US.
I have been living outside the United States for twelve years.
I always had problems with SMS until I got Google Fi. And that's a problem because, as the article here says, many banks insist on SMS these days. There are various services that give you a virtual number. But they always suffer from one of two problems: (1) VOIP numbers are 'blacklisted' by some banks for security reasons: they want a real cell phone number (2) I simply don't get SMSs in some cases some technical reason
Google Fi works everywhere. Even when there is no cell phone service: it will tunnel over WiFi.
Google shuts off the data on Fi after you've been outside the USA for a month. No problem, I'm happy to pay $25 a month for a 'dataless' connection that gives me SMS and voice.