If you have been a nomad for a while, you probably have a slightly unhealthy attachment to a string of digits. Palle Bo and Christoph Huebner certainly do. In this episode of the Nomad Summit podcast, they invite software engineer and indie hacker Joey Kudish to talk about why we cling to old phone numbers and how his project Tether Mobile might finally let nomads keep them without paying painful roaming fees.
From board-game nights in Chiang Mai to the dense jungle of global telecom regulation, this conversation is full of those small details every traveler will recognise. More importantly, it shines a light on a very practical problem. If you are banking, filing taxes or logging into health portals from abroad, you will eventually hit the SMS wall. Joey has decided to fix that for himself and for the rest of us.
The Emotional Side of Phone Numbers
Christoph opens with a confession many nomads can relate to. He only recently gave up the German mobile number he had since he was fifteen. For years he dragged that +49 identity across carriers and borders. People from his teenage years could still reach him on the same digits. At some point, though, it stopped matching his life. He jokes that being labelled “the German” in WhatsApp groups felt wrong once Estonia and Thailand felt more like home.
Joey laughs and adds his own story. His sister still uses a number that originally belonged to their father back in the nineties. It started as a home line and later became a cell phone number. As Joey says, “This number is like 45 years old at this point.” That kind of history makes it much harder to let go, even when you move country, change banks or spend most of your year outside your supposed home base.
How Nomads Actually Stay Connected
The hosts share their own setups. Christoph now runs an Estonian contract with unlimited data in Estonia and a roaming allowance inside the European Union. Whenever he spends longer in a country like Thailand, he also keeps a local SIM because services such as Shopee, TrueMoney or local banks insist on local numbers. Palle runs on an eSIM from their Nomad Summit partner GigSky and keeps his beloved Danish number on the cheapest possible subscription, just so it can still receive SMS.
This is the pattern for many digital nomads. They juggle one “identity number” for banks and two-factor authentication, plus whatever local mobile data or eSIM makes sense in a given country. It works until the home-country carrier decides roaming should cost 15 USD per day just to receive codes. That is the moment Joey shows up with a different idea.
Tether Mobile In A Nutshell
Joey explains Tether in very simple terms. It lets you either purchase a phone number or port in the one you already own, then forwards any incoming SMS messages to destinations you actually use. You can have your codes delivered to email, Telegram, Line, Discord or Slack instead of to a SIM card that lives in a drawer at home.
He built it because of his own frustrations. “If I wanted to keep my plan back in Canada and use it here in Thailand, they would charge me 15 dollars per day to access my SMS messages.” For years he searched for a consumer-friendly alternative. There are enterprise tools like Twilio or long running VoIP providers, but very few are built for individuals who simply want to keep using their bank or tax account while they travel.
Pricing And Practicalities
Palle immediately tests the idea against his own situation. His Danish number is short, memorable and printed on his company website. He wants to keep it less for calls and more because “nowadays I just need to be able to get these authentication codes.” Joey walks through the plan structure. Parking a number without SMS starts at two dollars per month. For actual SMS reception, plans begin at eight dollars per month and include up to 500 messages.
“That is enough,” Palle laughs. Joey admits he only needs a handful per month himself but has seen busier months around 150 messages. Calling and outbound SMS are deliberately not part of the first version. Joey is wary of becoming a spammer’s paradise and wants to get the hard part right first: reliable inbound SMS that works across borders and providers.
Why This Has Not Been Solved Before
If the idea sounds obvious, Christoph is the first to ask why nobody has cracked it earlier. After all, nomad forums and Reddit threads have complained about this problem for years. Joey’s answer is unglamorous. The SMS and phone system is “a little bit of a snake pit.” Carriers and regulators tightly control who can operate, what numbers can be used for and which traffic gets through.
There are examples like the German VoIP company SipGate and its consumer app Satellite, which can port German numbers and handle calls completely over the internet. Yet even there, SMS reception is unreliable. Some banking codes arrive, WhatsApp verification often does not. Joey explains that many VoIP providers technically register numbers as landlines or fax lines, which are second-class citizens in the SMS world. Tether instead registers numbers as proper mobile numbers and acts as a real carrier of record through partner networks.
Where Tether Works Today
Because every country has its own rules, Tether is launching with a curated list. At the time of recording, Joey can offer numbers in the United States, Canada, Thailand, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Switzerland, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and several other European countries. South American countries are next on his roadmap as he finds partners who understand that region well.
The project is still in beta. Joey, a handful of friends and early testers are using it day to day while he refines onboarding, subscriptions and monitoring. If you want to join, you can head to the waitlist at tethermobile.com/signup. He is slowly adding more testers so that when Tether launches publicly, reliability is already proven.
From Board-Game Café To Indie Hacker
Tether is not Joey’s first venture. Before this, he and his partner ran a board-game café in Canada. It was part restaurant, part retail store and part community hub. “A hobby turned into a business, turned into a bit of a, maybe nightmare is a strong word, but definitely a very difficult business to maintain.” After closing it they needed a reset, some sunshine and a creative challenge, so the digital nomad chapter began.
The love for board games never went away. In Chiang Mai Joey is a regular at Game Tree Café, where an expat owner curates a welcoming community. Christoph uses the chance to shout out Sunday game nights at RealSpace (you can hear more about that coliving and coworking space in the Nomad Summit episode with Isac) and at Gemoi Lifestyle Café, run by a Thai entrepreneur who caught the startup bug at last year’s Nomad Summit Buildathon.
Building Slowly And Intentionally
Christoph asks what Tether needs most right now. Joey’s answer might surprise typical startup fans. The bottleneck is not funding or marketing but patience. “I do not want to launch something that causes more issues for people than it solves.” He prefers to go slowly, get compliance right and ensure that no carrier or country silently blacklists his traffic.
The hosts appreciate that approach. If there is one thing everyone wants from their authentication method, it is that it just works. As Palle puts it, “We want things that work.” That is also why Joey uses the service himself. It powers his own numbers, which is probably the best form of quality control.
Will SMS Authentication Ever Die?
The conversation eventually turns philosophical. With the rise of passkeys, hardware tokens and clever AI agents, will SMS really still be around in a few years? Joey hopes not. “I am hoping that in five to ten years, we do not need Tether Mobile anymore and it can sunset because nobody uses SMS for authentication.” Palle laughs that this would ruin his business. Joey is fine with that. As a long-time software engineer, he trusts he will find another problem worth solving.
Until that future arrives, though, Tether fills a very real gap. If you are a digital nomad or long-term traveler who is tired of paying roaming fees just to receive six-digit codes, this episode is worth a listen. Joey shares the tricky parts of working with carriers, his Indie Hacker mindset and what he has learned by scratching his own itch.
To follow his work you can find Joey on X at @jkudish, on Instagram as @jkudish and on his personal site jkudish.com. For more episodes like this and to meet builders like Joey in person, check out Nomad Summit. The show is produced by RadioGuru.
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