Keeping A U.S. Cell Number

Anyone have experience keeping their U.S. cell number?  I have a part time consulting firm and want to make it easy for people to keep in touch. Thanks!

I use CallCentric.com  and I believe they also offer 1-800 number service, if that would be useful.

I am on the "bring your own phone Dirt Cheap" plan and it costs me something like $2.95 a month, and another $1 a month for text capabilities. As I am now back in the USA there is also a $1.50 charge for 911/EMS address listing. At present the text messages to overseas from the USA have to go through their web page portal (they won't forward so far, but apparently they are working on that) but any calls that are incoming are free regardless on my plan. I pay pennies per call for outgoing calls.. They have some plans that charge for outgoing calls, some other plans that include them in a higher monthly fee.  I'm not too sure what their business plans are, but you might want to look at them.

I've been with them for quite a number of years and have never had any problem with them whatsoever. Tech support is great, but a bit slow since it's all done through posting back and forth. They have always followed up within 24 hours when I had a question.

Thanks, Nan. That looks promising.

I tried Callcentric as Nan suggested and it works! I can call and text the USA cheaper than I can from my mobile and my friends and family can conact me as if I were home in Washington.

There is one problem though. Visa or my credit inion can't seem to send me a text.

Hi. Just saw this. I'm not sure why they cannot text you. I get texts from Fidelity and other entities, and did in the UK as well. The catch was that outside the USA the texts would go to the Callcentric web portal and not to my phone. (They say they are still working on that.) So you would need to log into your Callcentric account to read and send text messages if you are outside the USA. Did that not work for you, if you tried it?

One other perk CC offers - you can set up a conference call and have as many people as you'd like phone in. Basically it's like a zoom call without the video. And it's free.