Using the Phone
Using the phone? What kind of a subject is that, Dave?
Well, number one perhaps a break from some of my over technical posts. Number two, I find it’s something a lot of people have a big problem with … especially calling the Philippines from overseas, which is what I’ll focus on here.
What Time Is It? Anyone ever made a phone call and then found out it was three in the morning in the Philippines, when the recipient’s phone just rang and rang and rang? I have. It’s as easy error to make. An easy rule of thumb for those in the coming up in thePhilippines … on the next calendar day, of course.
If you’re familiar with shift work, our ‘day shift’ here is the same as the US ’swing shift’ or ‘evening shift’. When you’re ready to leave the office, Filipino office workers are coming into work. This, of course, varies a bit by the US time zone you are in … the Philippines has only one time zone …GMT +8, same as Hong Kong, and the Philippines doesn’t subscribe to the nonsense of Daylight Savings time.. it gets light here a little before 6 am and gets dark at about 6 pm, summer or winter.
A very useful tool if you use Fire Fox for your browser … and you should … is to install the tool called "Fox Clocks". This let’s you keep as many time zones as you wish in your status bar at the bottom of the screen, out of the way, but always there to remind you what time it is.
I find the web site www.Timeanddate.com very useful. Not only can you find the time at any city in the world, they offer a very neat "Meeting Planner" tool that lets you pre-plan online meetings or conference calls in as many as 5 time zones … handy for families with members scattered indifferent countries.
How Do I Dial? From any standard phone simply press 011 … this sets you up for a direct international dial and then 63 … the country code for the Philippines. Some cell phones are also set up for international dialing, some carriers don’t offer it. I recommend you Click here to get $5 in FREE CALLS! Call Philippines 9¢. if you don’t already have an overseas calling plan. You can also find lots of discount phone cards in any Filipino store … some of these are very god and some are total rip offs, so make sure you check their service before you invest.
After the IDD prefix and the country code you need the city code. Typically we call it a city code here in the Philippines although it is not always referenced to a city. Manila is ‘2′, Cebu is ‘32′, a complete list is here or on the PhilFAQS Links Page.
Unlike the US (where Area Codes are becoming scarce) the Philippines along with most other advanced mobile phone countries don’t try to give cell phone an ‘area code’ specific to their owner’s residence. Kind of silly to do it that way, if you think about it … they do call them ‘Mobile Phones’, do they not?
Each mobile phone carrier here gets their own area code(s) as required and that way there is essentially an infinite supply of numbers for the future. A mobile phone number here normally looks like mine: 0919-231-5625. The 919 is one of the codes assigned to my mobile carrier, Smart. Others, like 918, 927, etc. denote other operators.
That’s the trickiest thing about the whole process … the part you just breezed over.
You dial phone numbers differently within the Philippines than from outside … there’s just one zero to keep in mind, but it is probably the largest issue I have seen people have with phones in the eight-plus years I have been dealing with the Philippines.
To dial any toll call here in the Philippines you dial a ‘0′ (the number zero, there are no letter ‘O’s in phone numbers. Thus to dial a landline here in Bulacan a person in the Philippines would dial 044-xxx-yyyy (xxx is the exchange, yyyy is the subscriber’s number and 44 is the City Code for Bulacan.
To dial me on my cell phone, wherever I am the person would dial 0919-231-5625 … The )919 tells the phone system to send the call to Smart’s phone network which then ‘finds’ me and rings my phone.
But these numbers will not work from "Outside’.
To call a number in the Philippines from another country, dial the ‘63′ country code for the Philippines and then look and see if the number you want to reach has a leading zero. If it does, omit … leave it off … don’t dial it. If you dial 011-63-919-231-5625 from an internationally enabled phone there in the US, my phone will ring. If you leave the ‘0′ in, it won’t. All other zeros that may be in the number of course, "count" and should be dialed, but just remember to leave off the zero in front of the City or carrier Code and you’ll be fine.
Related posts:
- Yet Again With The Phone Stuff
- More on Making Money in the Philippines — Rethink the Phone
- More Nonesense Americans Won’t Miss in the Philippines
- Update On Cheap Phone Calls
- Philippines Questions — Round 9
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July 7th, 2008 at 4:27 am
Hi, thanks for the information on tome and telephone, and a great big thank you for the tip on Fox Clocks. I never knew about that, and it works great!
July 7th, 2008 at 6:41 am
You had be laughing out loud a few times in this post because I can remember my education into the world of Philippines phones, cell phones, mobile phones, landlines, etc.
Very good information and tips. My wife has a clock in her task bar that shows the time in the Philippines. This helps to coordinate the various meetups via chat messenger, chikka, voice calls etc.
As for calling cards, I wholeheartedly agree that one should “test” the card by making a call or too before investing too much $. With weekly connection fees, rounding up to the nearest 3 min/6 min/30 min, and numerous call connection disruptions - the minutes value on the various cards can disappear in a matter of a heartbeat or two.
cheers,
marshall
July 7th, 2008 at 9:29 am
@marshallmellow: Yes the Fox Clocks will put as many colcks ‘as you cna stand’ in your taskbar, it’s quite useful.
The phone cards can be problematical too, depending on where you are in the US. We bought several when we lived in Colorado that simply would not connect … when we forwarded the numbers to a sister in Florida she was able to use up the minutes that we had paid for but could never get in Colorado .. at least they weren’t a total watse, but I always found that overall my AT&T Philippine dialing plan was cheaper, even though the ‘per minute’ cost was higher than the per minute cost on the loss-leader phone cards.
July 7th, 2008 at 9:31 am
@John in Austria: Yes, isn’t Fox Clocks a nice tool? Particvularly useful if several continents are involved … like living in Europe and relatives in the Philippines and perhaps Qatar and the US as well … it’s hard to keep all those numbers straight … or it is for people with an attention span as short as mine
July 7th, 2008 at 9:40 am
I’m awaiting my magicjack to arrive. I will test it out here first and then give it a whirl when I visit next month - hopefully it is all it is cracked up to be. If so it will be a big help.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Fox Clocks is great, but I would avoid that other add-on called “Fox News”.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:51 am
@Laurence: Ha ha … no politics here. One of the better things about my cable service is that it does not have Fox News in any way shape or form. We also get International CNN which is more informative, in my view, than the US version. We get the BBC World and also the ABC news services. In content I far prefer the ABC because they understand/talk about Asia more than any of the others … but I seriously have language difficulties with the ABC at times.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:52 am
@marshallmellow: Just let me know when you get it operating, Marshall … I’ll call you on Skype and test from one to the other.