Yeah, don't leave Skype :( As I've mentioned before - the problem with Telegram is that it requires SMS instead of something more universal and anonymous like e-mail. Even if I had a cell phone (which I don't) I'd never give that number to some douchebag corporation. I like the design of the program, but I wish they would drop the SMS requirement or at least add on e-mail and/or other methods for registering.

Yeah I understand how do you feel about that ! And I can't leave Skype ! I use it for calling friends to play with ! And I still have a lot of people not using Telegram there :)
But yeah, That's the only annoying thing about Telegram, it requires a phone number, but I do have an account since a few months already and I didn't had any problem ! And thankfully, you can hide you phone number on it so it's fine for me ^^

If you really want, you can get a fake SMS number too via some online services. But it's more the principle of it to me - no company should require something that is much more personal like a phone number. The nice thing about e-mail is it's pretty anonymous, plus there's a much higher chance that everyone has e-mail. I think there's probably some sort of underlying market reason though - tracking your use, data-mining on the PC or phone it's on? Who knows. I wish there was a good open-source solution. :/

Mhh, I'm not entirely sure you can, I think they can tell when a number is a fake or not. And I think the reason why do they want to use your phone number instead of e-mail is probably because a phone number is harder to "fake" than an e-mail. It's probably made to avoid multiple accounts from the same person since the phone number must be verified.
But like I said I really don't mind that ! As long as my phone works, I don't care ^^ If I have an annoying / spamming call I will simply block it !