Originally Posted By: larry818
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You could port your phone number to a voip service and just set it to forward to the new phone. That would run about $25 / month. You could even call out on that number using the voip app.
Do any VOIP services handle SMS and MMS messages properly?

I am also interested in prying my phone numbers away from my mobile provider, but who to transfer to is the harder question, when both SMS and MMS are important.

Note: When both sender and recipient(s) of a text/multimedia message are using Apple devices and have allowed the feature, the messages are in fact transfered using iMessage and normal mobile data, not the mobile carrier's SMS system.