Mobile Numbers for Testing

Another very useful discussion to pop up on Slack recently was about generating mobile numbers for testing.

Specifically:

My team is planning to test application which will be in UK and Spain. We want to have phone numbers to send otps on is there any way we can get the international numbers generated for use of testing?

@arlene_andrews was in super quick with this suggestion
https://fakenumber.net/phone-number/united-kingdom - I know there is an option for Spain, as well.

Another member shared

im currently in a project that does the same which we just bought a sim card from each country and shipped it back to us in uk and we switch the sim in the device for each test. We only do 1 OTP test for each country as switching SIMs is time consuming so once the OTP test has passed we just grab the OTP from backend/logs as you have already proven the OTP SMS

https://receive-sms-online.info/ was also suggested.

What do you use when you need mobile numbers for testing?

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Shipping SIM cards to prove that a text message is sent feels a bit like overcomplicating your e2e test to me. What does the delivery of the OTP SMS to a phone with that specific SIM prove in your test? Are all mobile service providers, roaming agreements and networks inside your span of control and responsibility?

I’d say that if you can prove that the SMS is sent out, you’ve covered what is in your span of control. OTP’s can be intercepted from outgoing SMS or generator logs (or generated by test tools) just fine.

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I’ve let the OP know your questions @tcnh so hopefully they come back to us :slight_smile:

I’m confused, what are we testing here?

SMS technology for teleco? Is it really necessary with real SIM from each country? What does this supposed to prove or disprove? Isn’t there an sent log we can use to observe?

Ok, maybe just one sim card just to be sure the machine did not just say it has sent