> …it's the only thing which has prevented me from having to continually make international calls from a friends phone
By relying on other people it is possible to do without many things.
However, unless you have other ways of signaling sufficient status or wealth (such as being a digital nomad living abroad in a lower income country), people you continuously rely on for essentials might start treating you with a little less respect.
My sister’s former boyfriend used to carry a phone without a SIM. His mom ended up calling my sister or our landline to check up on her son. It was annoying AF.
Feel free to live off the grid, but please make sure you don’t leech off of those around you.
This is really hard to do. I don't live off the grid by any means - there's a million ways to contact me, e.g. text message, calling, Signal messages, emails, etc. However, I don't use Whatsapp in a country where the vast majority of people does.
I'm fine with missing things if people don't feel like using any of the methods I have to get in touch with me. However, instead of either not bothering or using one of the communication channels we have in common, people tend to ask my partner to relay messages to me. So short of starting to use Whatsapp (which I'd really rather not do, and which requires installing a different OS on my phone - and possibly get a data subscription as well), the burden is on my partner to either tell them to contact me directly, or to relay the messages.
Any good tips for others ways of dealing with this are very welcome.
Depending on how deep you want to go down the rabbit hole, you could bridge WhatsApp to Matrix using the web client and whatsapp running in an emulator - https://www.matrix.org/blog/2019/02/26/bridging-matrix-with-...
Not a solution for even most people unless you're really into Matrix and running your own servers though. (I bridge WhatsApp, but use a physical phone to do so)