How it works
JMP issues a real PSTN number in the United States or Canada and binds it to a Jabber ID on the federated XMPP network. Calls, SMS, MMS and voicemail arrive in any standards-compliant XMPP client — Cheogram on Android, Dino on the desktop, Conversations, Gajim, or a server you ran yourself. The bridge sits at the carrier edge in Canada; traffic from your device to JMP's servers is wrapped in TLS, and an OMEMO-enabled chat between two JMP-routed XMPP accounts is end-to-end encrypted. The PSTN side is, of course, the PSTN. JMP says so in plain language on its privacy statement: the phone network does not encrypt metadata or content, and a state-level adversary should be assumed to see both.
Account top-ups are denominated in USD or CAD and can be paid with on-chain Bitcoin, the Lightning Network, Monero, fiat or physical cash. A line costs $4.99 USD per month, additional lines $2.45. New accounts must receive at least one inbound text before they can send out — an anti-abuse gate, not a KYC step.
KYC & privacy
There is no identity verification at signup. Registration happens through an XMPP message to a bot; no email address, no phone number, no government document is requested. JMP describes its policy as no-logs by intent, but is honest that some metadata lives in operational logs and backups. SMS content and metadata are retained for up to seven days for resiliency; MMS media and voicemail recordings for up to thirty days after the last fetch.
The legal posture is Canadian. Servers sit in Canada, the operator answers to federal Canadian and British Columbian authority, and the privacy statement commits to complying with lawful requests from those jurisdictions. That is not a backdoor — it is what any Canadian operator is bound to — but it is the caveat that separates JMP from a protocol-level guarantee.
Strengths and limits
The strengths are unusual in this category. The codebase — jmp-register, sgx-catapult, the Cheogram client — is open source under AGPL and visible on git.singpolyma.net and GitLab. The operator, Soprani.ca, has been associated with the same lead developer since 2017, and the service has run nine years without a documented breach, freeze or stolen-funds event. Crypto is treated as a first-class payment rail, not a novelty. Numbers can be ported in.
The limits are honest. Coverage is the USA and Canada only; emergency numbers (911, 112, 999) do not work; the inbound-message-before-you-can-send rule trips up users porting in clean numbers. There is no Tor onion address. There is no third-party security audit on file — the openness is voluntary code review, not Cure53. And the mailing address is in a jurisdiction whose telecom regime includes lawful intercept tooling, which matters if your threat model includes Canadian or US subpoenas.
Verdict
For an XMPP-native user who wants a working North American number without surrendering an identity to the carrier, JMP is the most mature option in its lane and has been for years. For anyone whose threat model includes nation-state telecom interception, the service is candid that the PSTN cannot protect them. Grade: A- (8.7/10). Trust: TRUSTED.
For XMPP-native users who need a working North American number without an identity attached, JMP is the most mature option in its lane and has been for years. The honesty about phone-network metadata is itself the service's clearest virtue. Grade: A- (8.7/10). Trust: TRUSTED.
