ColombiaVeg.com has left 5 comments

ColombiaVeg.com comments on What Phone to use in Colombia (Cell)

You do have to buy a SIM card for your unlocked phone, from the provider you choose. But it is not expensive at all. A typical price will be 15k pesos (not dollars!) for a SIM card. With the purchase, they throw in 10k pesos worth of calling. So the SIM card costs next to nothing. Just choose carefully which provider will suite your needs best (Comcel, Moviestar, Tigo). Find out what service your friends in Colombia use and select the most popular service among them. This is recommended because celular service providers don't charge the same way for use here. The cheapest calls are made by calling people with the same service. But if you call someone using a different celular service, or you call a landline with your cell phone, the call can cost up to 3 times as much as calling someone using your same service. When people need to call someone who uses a different celular service, they pay for minutes in one of the thousands of calling shops. As far as running into problems using your unlocked phone here, if you are careful to get it completely unlocked by a reputable place, rather than just opening one band, etc., you should not have trouble. >R

ColombiaVeg.com comments on Voice over IP legal?

For some years, countries blocked VOIP calling to support the traditional domestic telecom companies while they got their act together to be able to offer the same service. Very few countries still block it. In Colombia, most telecom companies are offering VOIP service. I use a software based VOIP service out of Europe with no problem. Next step is one of those wireless VOIP phones to use with the service, so I'm not tied down to the laptop via headset to make calls. >R

ColombiaVeg.com comments on What Phone to use in Colombia (Cell)

Hey Static, Great you were able to unlock it yourself. Some Nokia's are easier to unlock than other brands, with just a code. Many others require connecting the phone via cable. But $5/$10 is not much to be sure the job is done right. >R

ColombiaVeg.com comments on What Phone to use in Colombia (Cell)

Hey JChrisusa, GSM is used here. So, only phones used by AT&T (formerly Cingular, which was formerly at&t wireless, ...) and T-Mobile will work here. You do not need to start a contract to use your phone here. Tons of people here use prepaid cards. You buy a card for $5, $10 or $25 bucks, The card gives you a code to enter in your phone to receive credit. For smaller credit purchases, they give you a month to use it up. For larger credit purchases, they give you 2 months. You will need an unlocked phone to use here. You can either take it to a small shop in the states to unlock it. Or there are shops here in Bogota that specialize in unlocking phones. The older the phone model, the cheaper to unlock it. If you decide to wait until you get to Bogota to unlock it, I would be happy to take you to a place that charges between $5 and $10 bucks for average cell phones. Hope that helps, >R

ColombiaVeg.com comments on taking U.S.A cellphnoes to Colombia

US Cell Phones in Colombia Mr Bell, pretty much any GSM phone from the US will work in Colombia, with one condition: Most are sold locked. You will need to unlock it either in the US or Colombia. In Colombia, the cost depends on how new the model is. The newer, the more they will charge you. If it is too new, they may not have the necessary software to unlock it yet. So take a model that has been around 6 to 12 months. I unlocked an older model last year in Bogota for about $10 dollars. It works fine. Once you slip in a chip from a Colombian providor, you will be fine. In fact, the people unlocking your phone should tell you if you can expect any problems. For a compatible GSM phone, worst case is the loss of some of the phone's unsupported extra features. I have also seen unlocked cell phones sold on Ebay. You may also get a free or very cheap cell phone from the cell service provider in Colombia, if you contract for post-pay service.

Hope that helps!