Changing a DID's SMS/MMS provider without porting
Without porting a number, its texting provider can be changed by the owning carrier. Most carriers don't allow this, and their tech support will be unaware that it's even possible. As an experiment a few years ago, I changed the texting provider on a friend's VOIP number at .... https://www.sonic.com .... to SignalWire, and it worked. The change is accomplished by changing the NNID (Netnumber ID). Sonic's porting department made the change for us.
My main DIDs are at .... https://www.voip.ms .... which doesn't allow custom NNID. VOIP.MS's texting is primitive and painful to use, even through the VOIP.MS app and Textable ($5 monthly).
Why isn't custom NNID widely available?
Are there drawbacks for the user to having a custom NNID?
(If you Google "NNID", be aware that it's widely used for "Nintendo Network ID", which is unrelated.)
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Here's a useful tool for my topic above. UNLEC is free.
For any US or Canada DID, this website .... https://www.unlec.com .... performs three lookups:
• OCN
• CNAM (click the link toward the bottom)
• NNID (click the link toward the bottom)