For a long time, you didn’t need an Indian phone number to create an account at Hotstar and SonyLIV in India. But, May 2019, brought that era to an end, and now you need to have an Indian cell phone number to create an account at any of the sites. Does that mean the days of streaming SonyLIV and Hotstar abroad has come to an end? Is there a way to get an Indian phone number which will make you able to create a SonyLIV and/or a Hotstar account abroad?
Many years ago, you needed an Indian cell phone number to create a Hotstar account, and also an Indian payment card. I remember trying to find a solution to this then, and I even managed to order an Indian Sim card online which actually gave me an Indian phone number. But, I didn’t get past the Indian payment card challenge, and thus it all ended there.
But, then came the start of 2019, and suddenly I discovered that you no longer need an Indian phone number to sign up for Hotstar. In addition, I found solutions that helped me pay for Hotstar and SonyLIV, even though I didn’t actually live in India and without having access to a real payment card in India. I have used this method myself, and I know hundreds of other people have followed my instructions as well.
And then came May 2019 – once again an Indian cell phone number is required
And then a few days ago, I noticed that once again an Indian cell phone number is required in order to create a Hotstar account again. And yes, the same is true if you want to create a SonyLIV account. If you already have one, you can freely have fun and use that, but if you haven’t created an account yet, you will have a much harder time actually creating one as of now.
Is there a way to get an Indian free SMS verification number or something?
That is a question I have been asking myself many times, but if you search DuckDuckGo or Google for keywords like “Free SMS number in India”, “Receive SMS India”, or similar topics, you will find lots of websites, but none of them actually provide Indian numbers.
It is very hard to get an actual Indian cell phone number and to get a number, you need to register it on an actual person and show legal papers to get the SIM card. That is why you will not find hundreds of disposal numbers from India online which you can use to receive free SMS’s and to verify services that require Indian cell phone numbers online.
But, is there a solution?
I haven’t found one yet, but I suggest that you visit some chat channels, find a forum about India, visit Reddit, or maybe ask someone you are playing World of Warcraft with, and maybe you will find some Indian friends who doesn’t mind letting you use their cell phone number to register a Hotstar or a SonyLIV account, and you will be ready to go very soon. If you even pay them a few dollars for the job, it will probably be even easier to fix.
And, once you have the solution in hand and have created your SonyLIV or Hotstar account, follow our instructions on how to watch Hotstar abroad and how to watch SonyLIV abroad to access the sites, to buy the Premium package with your existing account, and to get the max out of these fantastic Indian services.
