I guess abbreviated my statement a little too much leading to the impression I was a bit dimwitted. What I should have added was: "if your carrier kicks you off for lack of VoLTE support on your device -- and they did, then you don't get data or SMS either because you don't have service at all . . .because they kicked you off. Then you're really in a bind."
Fortunately, I realized that I had an alternate phone I could put the SIM in to get the telegram code by SMS to the number I had originally used to register.
