More Nonesense Americans Won’t Miss in the Philippines
OK, OK, this post will likely provoke a rash of comments becuase the little snippet I am going to quote here is from a Candian friend of mine and the title would suggest I am calling Canadians “Americans”. I mean just how silly is it that people think only one country of the many on the three Americansd contnents can be called “Americans”? We need a new name or methodology, really. If you’re from the country located on North America i between Canaf\da and Mexico what country do you think you’re from?
I saw an intersting piece a few weeks back on Australian TV. A British newscaster … that’s a fellow from the United Kingdom you understand … was on the street in and about Washington, DC, USA. He was asking people on the street to name any country that started with a “U”. Aside from the typical morons who andswered Utah (no that wasn’t Sarah Palin) or Yugoslavia, he didn’t get a single interviewee to name the United States of America or his own country, the United Kingdom, which his accent stromngly suggested. Not too surprising I guess, given the 16th place or so standing of the US school system.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. The lady who wrote this little realisttic tale of woe is a Canadaian, not an American, but the obstacles she had to overcome and the absolutley anti-custom attitudeof the phone companies seem very little different.
This was going to be an entire post about buying a cellphone, but comments on the previous post show that you can all predict how that goes. There’s the phone itself, with the possibility of cameras, video games, holographi projectors and laser death rays, when what I am really looking for is good predictive text messaging software and buttons that won’t wear out quickly. There’s the option of pay as you go, versus contract (and you can’t swap between these, because they involve different telephones. Pay as you go is ludicrously expensive (how about 55 cents a minute for nationwide long distance?) The contract probably isn’t much better when I consider that I have to pay for it in months when I’m not using that telephone. And the contracts are complex with plans and add-ons that I kind of need but aren’t really appropriate to the way I use the phone. And of course there is the difficulty of getting a phone number that won’t be long distance when I’m at home. I grumble, then suck it up, acknowledging apologetically to the young women working at the store that overpriced Canadian cell service is not their fault. I buy the phone, sign the contract, memorize my new number, and go back to the hotel. That’s enough about that. I’ll give you too much information about something else…. Read more here about the sad, sad state of the cell phone buisness in North America and the rest of Aviatrix’s adventures.
So why write about this? Simple. When you make the move to the Philippines you give up all that nonesense as well as substantial monthly bills.
You buy a phone for the outlet of your choice. The phone you want not the one some carrier insists they want to ell you. (The iPhone is a notable exception, if you are addicted to hippy toy junk, you are stuck with an exclusive Philippines carrier … hope that cancer doesn’t spread).
You then buy a SIM (Subscriber Information Module), really you phone number chip, from anyone you choose. Want several numbers from several different carriers? That’s easy, as well as phone that hold several chips and thus have multiple numbers. A SIM costs as little a $3 dollars or so, one time, so you can add or change anytime, cheap.
You can then just ‘load’ the SIM card with as much calling time as you want … buy buying a simnple scratch-off ‘load card’ … or stopping by any one of thousands and thousands of stores and stall fronts. You cna even by laod as you go ‘on line’.
“Load na, Dito” (Load Here!) is one of the most common signs you will see in the Phlippines. Misison accomplished.
No nonese of being ’stuck’ with a carrier you don’t like.
No nonesense of being in a loacation that one carrier reaches and another doesn’t … just slip in a SIM from a carrier who does do the job.
No nonesense about ‘local excahnges’ for your cell phones (how stupid is a ‘local exchange’ for a mobile device anyway?)
And no monthly bills, ever. (you can, ifyou want, find companies that will sell you US-style plans where you do have a monthly bill … but why be a glutton for punishment).
That’s how it works here in the Philippines. Every time I pick up my cell phone I laugh at those pitiful characters at AT&T back in the US who used to rook me for more than $90 a month for the very bottom-iine service for two simple phones … they are now missing nearly $2400 they never got from me since I moved … and the beat goes on/
Related posts:
- One Thing Americans Will Surely Miss in the Philippines
- Some Things Americans Will Not Miss in the Philippines
- Yet Again With The Phone Stuff
- Using the Phone
- Philippines Questions — Round 9
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November 14th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Hi Dave,
Never having owned a cell phone in Canada, moving to Europe introduced me to them. Not being a *fone-fanatic* my wife introduced me to the SIM card phone. What a great deal! It costs me €20 ($30) a YEAR to keep it active. If I use up this fee, I buy more as in the Philippines, if I don’t use it, I must every year buy new credit of €20. No problem. Cheap phone.
When I toured in the Philippines, I checked my phone’s frequencies against what was available in the Philippines here: http://www.thetravelinsider.info/roadwarriorcontent/quadbandphones.htm and found mine were compatible. Upon arrival at a resort in Dumaguete, the owner showed me how to buy a new SIM card, unlock my Nokia phone, and transfer my phone numbers over from my old SIM card.
From then on I had a useable phone in the Philippines. When I left, I transferred the remaining credit on the SIM to a friend’s phone (another neat advantage down there), re-inserted my Austrian SIM and left for home. The Philippine SIM was useless after three months so I just ditched it.
One thing to note, North American frequencies are not compatible with the Philippines, unless you have a quad-band phone with SIM card.
Love the Philippines SIMplicity!
(I had to say it!)
November 14th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Hi Dave - that’s too bad about the iPhone. Yes, I’m addicted to “hippy, toy, junk” I find the phone absolutely indispensable. AT&T on the other hand is the worst carrier I’ve had (not that I really care for any of them). I really appreciate the way charges are handled in the Philippines. BTW if anyone else is addicted to “hippy toy junk”, they can get those iPhones jailbroken and use any carrier. I’ve not done that here, but might consider that there to take advantage of the load system there.
I’m sure that it won’t matter by the time I’m there. But I’m with you, I hope they don’t go to our terrible contract/monthly bill system ever.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Hi all, it is really not the type of phone or carrier you have. it is the channel access technology the carriers are using. For a long time, North America uses the CDMA technology and resisted strongly against the GSM technology. Everywhere else, GSM is used, i.e. Europe. You can go from one country to another in EUrope and your cell phone will work - either roaming or new simcard. CDMA and GSM competed very hard to get the China contracts. In the Philippines, we have the GSM. In NZ andAustralia, they have GSM. So North American has started to introduce GSM, If not, they will fall far behind the rest of the world.
If you buy a phone - ask these questions: Does it use gSM? and secondly, is it unlocked? The carriers in North America are smart - they lock the phones they sell as part of their packages. So if you cancel the plan, you can’t even use that same phone to go into another plan, or the prepaid method. You have to buy another. If it uses CDMA, it won’t work roaming in countries that uses GSM only. The smart thing to do is to buy the Cellphone here in Asia, they are more likely GSM and the unlocked version. I can use the GSM phones in Vancouver and Calgary now because the main carrier there has both GSM and CDMA.
Hope this helps.
November 14th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
@John in Austria: Exceleelnt advice and agoos resource yu linked to there, John. thanks, I’ve usedit myself. becuase of the dumb North American practice of tying mobile phones to a geo-location, US and Canadian users should be real careful with multi-band phones and dialing plans. Many US-based “world dialing’ plans will work great, except the phone is’homed’ back in the US location and you could wind up paying $4 USD pe rminute fromn calls here in the Philippines.
get a Philippine SIM and an unlocked phone and free yourself of North American tyranny
November 14th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
@Ellen: Good advice, Ellen. Americnas tend to think the US system is modern but in actuality the North Amercian cell system is an anacronism, far, far behind countrie slike the Philippines, China etc.
You need to make sure th ephone works here in the Philippines as well as having a Philippine carrier in most cases …. betterto have two different numbers than to be ;egally robbed as most North American carriers do.
To those with no multi-band phone, coming here for a visit my advice … go to tyhe mall your first morningbhere, but\y a phone at a discount shop … there are many name brand phones brand new in the sealed box t chose from. But\y tyhe phone and a SM card, call home and leave the number (text is cheaper if you know ayone in the US who uses text ;)\-)
Then use the phone to make your trip \here easier and hand it to someone in the family who needs aphone upon departure … really this whole procedure will cost lesst than one months typical US cell charges, and you risk no ’surprise’ on your US bill after you return hone.
November 14th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
@Randy C: Sorry to gore your ox, Randy. I’m sure there’s alot of value to the iPhone to those who understand it. I just prefer a phone that makes and receives calls and doesn’t have so many bells and whistles.
Like anything else involving phone lockimng issuues, there certanbly are people here who can nlock iPhones … thewhole ideaof ‘locking’ is really a misnomer, it really just involves a password … and any password, given enough incentive, can be hacked.
November 14th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Hi Dave, yes I agree. Even Bill Gates said that the wireless techonology in America is several years behind Europe, for example. I would think protectionism is to blame. The electrical voltage, for example, why do North America still use 110 v? Almost everywhere else use 220v. Frustrating.
November 15th, 2008 at 9:33 am
@Ellen: Much more than protectionism is the ‘analog brains’ of the major telcos in the US … especially theold crowd at the former Bell labs. Once they werte world laeders in technology … among other things they inveterd the semi-cunductor trasistor which is the basis for everything digital today.
But somewjhere along the line they got into the ‘we have years of expereince’ trap … tey were strictly divided into ‘voice’ guys and ‘data’ guys and the voice guys pushed out the first cellnetworks. So evry 1.5 megabits of data only carrieed 24 voice channels becuase ‘that’s the way voice has always been done’.
The rest of the world, especially Philippines and China had no ‘heritage’ so to speak and started from scratch with digital equipment. It’s taken years and years for some of the old ‘expereinced’ voice guys in the US to age out or die off.
This is one of the main reasons I retired when I did from government service in the US. eeven tho I was in the DoD, not always noted for being technology leaders, the entworks we wanted to push out around the world were a constant battle … not with the t4chnology, but with the mind set of US carriers. If there’s equiment that was bilt to last 50 years and it isn’t broken yet, no one wants to modernize for the sake of better, faster, cheaper service. You think it’s a Filipino trait to make simot down to the last spec of goodness … your most tipid Filipino freind is a world class spendthrift next to an engineer from AT&T.
November 15th, 2008 at 9:45 am
@Ellen: On the 110 versus 220 issue in North merica. here’s the jke. Both North American houses and Filipino houses all run on 220 (actually there’s typically two ‘hot’ wires with 110 each and common in North America is a ‘neutral’. between teh neutral and grund is 110, between the two hot wires is 220).
In North America it was decided to wire all the outlets, lghts, etc. between neutral and one or the other ‘hot’ leg … yeielding 110 volts .. which doubles the powr consumption and thus the profit to the service provider. Heavy appliances such as stoves, dryers, water heaters of course are wired from hot leg to hot leg and run on 220 anyway. Here in the Philippines it’s most common to just have the two hot legs and all the service is across the legs, everything light load or heavy is on 220. mag sa tipid.
In my area at least, you can hire an electrician to run a ‘neutral’ to the pole and wire the house ’split’ between 220 and 110 exactly as in North America … but why?
In Clark and Subic where the US had bases most of the former US family housing and even some off-base housing is already wired the North American way. The only advantage? Profit to Meralco. The only appliance I broght from the US that still needs 110 is my washing machine and a transformer hadles that 3 or 4 times a week. When that machine eventually gives up, I’ll of course buy a much more efficient, smaller and non-rusting LG or other quality Chinese brand and never worry about voltage again.