Comment by zamadatix
5 years ago
How does this work for Fi users?
I've had a Google Voice number for so long it's the only voice number I have these days. I can't say it's a recent experience that it doesn't work with certain things though it has been a recent experience the things are aware it doesn't work and will alert you. Overall though I've yet to run into anything I couldn't use an alternative method for authentication be it luck (e.g. got into Discord before they required phone numbers) or email or calls being a thing (and working when text doesn't).
Ironically the biggest PITA I had was when I decided to migrate my primary cell number to Google Voice it was my fallback contact number. Thankfully I only ran into that as an issue once and was able to get back in to set up Google Authenticator (which was also new and hip at the time).
I'm not sure if there are any issues on Google Fi, since they're an MVNO, so identical to any other cellular network.
As one point of anecdata, the IRS refused to honor my Fi phone plan because it didn't have my name and mailing address registered on it (or at least to their satisfaction). I don't know if they still require a post-paid cell phone plan for their auth scheme or not, because I gave up trying to make it through after about 6 months of requesting magic codes through the USPS
Anyway, that's a lot of words to say "MVNO" is for sure not identical to "any other cellular network" for a certain class of interested parties, in the same way that pre-paid credit cards are not the same as other credit cards