How do I call and text within Morocco?

For calling and texting on the ground, the single best move is to buy a local prepaid SIM the moment you arrive. Morocco has three networks — Maroc Telecom (the broadest coverage, especially rural and desert), Orange and inwi — and all three sell tourist SIMs at the airport arrivals hall and at phone shops on every high street. You will need your passport to register it (a legal requirement, done in two minutes at the counter), and you top it up with "recharge" credit or a bundle of minutes, texts and data.

Once you have a Moroccan number, calling and texting locally is trivially cheap. Dialling within Morocco, you use the full ten-digit number starting 0 (mobiles begin 06 or 07); to call a Moroccan number from abroad or from a foreign SIM you swap that leading 0 for the +212 country code. If you keep your home SIM in the phone as well, get a dual-SIM setup or an eSIM so you can receive your home calls while using the cheap Moroccan data — many guests now just buy a Moroccan eSIM before flying and skip the airport queue entirely.

Here is the cultural reality that changes everything, though: most people in Morocco barely use traditional calls and SMS for anything. Communication runs on WhatsApp. Your riad, your guide, the shop arranging your shipping, the surf school, new friends — everyone exchanges WhatsApp numbers and talks via voice notes, calls and chats over data or wifi. So in practice, once you have any data connection at all, you are reachable and can reach almost anyone for free through the app, regardless of which SIM you hold.

My streamlined recommendation: install WhatsApp before you travel, buy a Moroccan SIM or eSIM with a generous data bundle on arrival, and you have all the bases covered — cheap local calls and texts if you ever need them, and free WhatsApp voice and messaging the rest of the time. Keep your riad's and driver's WhatsApp numbers saved, and you can confirm a pickup, ask directions or send your live location from anywhere with signal. It is genuinely the simplest communication setup of anywhere I plan trips.