[OFF?] Free or affordable German voice mail number?
 

I have countless such offers from the US, at least one (free) from the UK. I wonder if Germany offers such solutions? Namely, a free or affordable German voice mail number.

There are several free VoIP providers in Germany such as sipgate. However as German law requires geographic numbers to be assigned only to residents of the corresponding geographical area (or people who can prove a relevant relation to the area, such as a business), they do all verify subscribers' residency before assigning a geographic number. Unfortunately non-geographic numbers in the 032-numbering range which was intended for new innovative services such as VoIP have never gained market acceptance and so there's no more provider who would issue such.
Hence there's no legal way to get a German number for foreigners.

As far as I know, the limitation is only valid for German geographic numbers. It should be no problem for anybody to get a German prepaid mobile number including a voice mail.

Maintaining a German SIM normally costs about 15 euros per year.

There are also various VoIP providers outside of Germany offering German geographic numbers starting from about 2 euros per month. Some of them without a requirement for address in Germany (try netelip.com,...).

If it is only for a limited user group, you could get a free German geographic number at rebtel.com and forward it for a moderate per minute cost to your existing voice mail.

Sure, there's no legal hurdle when issuing mobile numbers to foreigners but according to international's other recent thread he wants to evade roaming fees for incoming calls which are less than € 0.09/min. As listening to voice mail of a German SIM card from abroad is more expensive, this is probably no alternative for him.

Afaik you can keep a Fonic or Lidl SIM active for even less as any action subject to charge (outbound call, SMS etc) extends its validiy period of 12 months.

That of course incurs the risk of the numbers getting seized if the regulatory authority learns about this practice and I can tell for sure that they definitely don't tolerate any illegal number assigments to users without a geographic relation to the relevant area.