I’m sad to say I’m leaving Taiwan for personal reasons and future development prospects after almost seven largely wonderful years here. But I’m not “done” with Taiwan yet, and I want to keep a local phone number for people to contact should the need arise.
I currently have two virtual US numbers, one through Google Voice and one through RingTo, but I want one that starts with +886. I’d be willing to pay a small amount for the privilege. Any leads?
Sad to hear you are leaving. I figured you would be around for a long while 
. But if you are like me, you will leave and after a year or so miss it enough to come back.
I would also like to know if there is such thing as a VoIP Taiwan number, but I doubt it because of the per second charge to make calls to landlines and cell phones. What I did when I left Taiwan was keep my Chunghua phone active and set it to automatic credit card payments from my overseas credit card. The cheapest plan is $188 a month which is nothing when you are making foreign wages. Yes, the per minute rate sucks but you can use it to see who is calling, then use a calling card from US to call them back for cheaper.
Unfortunately that means I’d need to keep a second phone charged at all times on the off chance someone might call. I’d still prefer a virtual option. :-/
I expect to make frequent visits back, what with having in-laws (who I am quite fond of) here.
Have you found something? If not, since Sonetel unfortunately doesn’t include cc 886 in their offering yet, you may have to take the Google route with “voip taiwan phone number” (without the quotes) - there’s plenty of info there, but i have no idea how good it is…
(Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Singapore - numbers there can all be had from Sonetel, a Sweden based international VoIP provider whose services i can recommend.)