Here’s a frequent question about Living in the Philippines that we’ve had here a number of times before … it’s still always a viable question, though, because services change, cell phone change and prices definitely change.

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Can I Use My Cell Phone in the Philippines?
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Simple question. Sometimes complicated answer. The first step in finding the simple answer is this …

Analog or digital: If you have a US cell phone and it is a few years old, or if you bought one on a “really good deal” somewhere it still may be an “old technology” analog phone, most commonly called CDMA. There are already many areas of the US where these phone no longer work and they will not work in the Philippines, period. How do you find out, if the term CDMA sounds like a foreign language to you? Google is your friend … or ask your carrier directly.

Digital or GSM: OK, let’s suppose your phone is digital … commonly called GSM … Global Services for Mobiles. The “Global” in that name is not quite as “Global” as it sounds. There’s another technicality involved called …

Frequency or Band: You mobile phone is actually a radio “transceiver”. Like any radio it only works on certain “bands” or sets of frequencies that it is licensed to use by the FCC or the FCC equivalent in other countries. There are four bands that cover almost all of the world: 900Mhz 1800Mhz 1900Mhz 850Mhz. The first two bands, 900 and 1800 MHz are the ones used in the Philippines. The second two, 1900 and 850 MHz are the two in use in the US and Canada. You can see a simple graphic here that shows you all the counties and the mobile phone frequencies they use. In the US there are single band phone, dual band phones, tri-band and quad-band phones. Again, you need to research for yourself what bands your phone works on. If you have one, or ideally both of the Philippines bands it will physically work here … if you don’t, it won’t, period.

Choice of Carrier: Your carrier, the company who actually handles your calls and sends you a bill is your next consideration. The way a cell phone works, anywhere in the world is, when it turned on it searches for a cell site signal. If it finds one it sends and identification message which includes an ID number for the “owning” carrier and asks to join the network. No matter where in the world you are, that number is routed back to your carrier and the carrier responds with one of three messages, based, among other things, upon where you are trying to join the network. Ignore: … in other words they don’t choose to provide service, at least where you are, Receive Only: … meaning the network you are physically contacting may route calls to you and Provide:, menacing the local cell site may pass along calls you try to make or allow you to receive. It’s business, it’s a multi-billion dollar business, and it has its complications. If you want to take your tri or quad band GSM North American phone to the Philippines and receive or make calls based on your existing North American number, only your carrier can tell you if your plan allows this. I can’t, and neither can anyone else, reliably, because they may be using the same carrier but be on a different plan.

When you check with your carrier be sure you check the price for making calls here. Three or four dollars a minute is not uncommon, so while you may be able to take your phone and use it, you may not want to.

Unlocking: If your phone will work here but you don’t like the prices your carrier offers another solution is to “unlock” the phone from the carrier you are using and use a different, local carrier here in the Philippines. Some US carriers will unlock your phone for you. Some won’t. There are shops in the US who will unlock any phone for a fee. This varies from legal to illegal, depends on your state, your carrier and perhaps the specific carrier plan you are on.

You can bring the phone here anyway and there are shops everywhere in metro areas who can unlock the phone for you. Again the decision to do this is yours, it may not be legal back in the US, it may void the warranty on the phone, etc., etc. but rest assured it can be done.

SIM Cards: If you do have an unlocked GSM phone and you are here in the Philippines you can buy a SIM (Subscriber Identification Module) card for literally peanuts anywhere you go. yesterday I saw SUN (one of the “big three” SIMs in a shop at the mall for PhP 90, BOGO (Buy One Get One) … the SIM is part of the ‘brains’ of your phone, it provides you with service and assigns you your actual phone number … so you can get two complete phone “personalities” for less that $2.00 US. Changing a SIM is just a matte of flipping (usually) the battery out of the back of the phone and installing the new (postage stamp-size) SIM. With a Philippine number your calls will be in the 1 or 2 pesos per minute range … those special sale SIMs I saw also included two days of unlimited calls (on the SUN network) and several hundred free texts.

My Phone Won’t Work, What Do I Do? May advice, if your existing phone won’t work here or you don’t like the idea of unlocking it and tinkering about with it is do what I do, the easy thing. I saw this very phone

Philippine Cell Phone $20 USD Brand New

the other day in a shop in our local SM Mall (don’t by a mobile phone from a street vendor stall, it may be counterfeit, stolen or worse.) Buy from a shop in a name brand mall and insist on a factory sealed carton with the Philippine NTC (National Telecommunications Commission) registration stamp sealing the box closed. Day before yesterday this phone, which is one of the most basic phones you can buy, but does everything I want and more, was selling for PhP 1012 … $20.20 USD at today’s rate. That’s in a box, 1 year warranty, AC charger, very thing you need except a SIM card of your choice.

That’s what I would do, any day of the week. If you stay a typical 21 day tourist visit you\r phone investment costs will be less than a dollar a day. What to do at the end of the trip? Keep it for the next trip, sell it at a second hand shop, give it to some needy person or make a big hit by gifting it to a favorite niece or nephew. To me, unless I ha\d some special needs for my US number or a PDA style phone. say an iPhone that I relied upon for non-phone functions as well, I’d just buy a simple Nokia and talk happy while visiting the Philippines.

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