You might try a Matrix group instead. Doesn’t require a phone number and supports more than 1000 users unlike Signal. Search is bad though unfortunately.

If you’re looking to rent a matrix server, I highly recommend etke. Faily cheep for what they offer and great support. As far as your concerns for noise suppression, the best workaround atm is to use Nvidia RTX Voice and AMD’s Noise Suppression features. At least until Element either builds in their AI noise suppression, or adds PTT.

Correct. Home server operators need to opt-in to reporting (it’s off by default). On top of that, users on home servers who have opted in to reporting also need to opt in to analytics. So there are potentially many more users than are being reported to the matrix org.