Calling U.S. from Argentina

May 3, 2007 12:51 PM

Help me find a good solution to making calls from Argentina to the US.

I'm going to be in Argentina for ~3 weeks later this month, and I was wondering what the best way would be to keep in touch with my wife and with my parents. I will be based in Córdoba, I believe, but I may only be there on the weekends (details are still trickling in). I've got a few ideas; let me know what you think.

• I'll have my Macbook with me, so I can use iChat to keep in touch via audio or even video chats with my wife, and audio chats with my parents. Also, I don't know how often I will have access, how reliable it will be when I do have it, or how fat the pipes will be (so to speak).



• This has some of the same downsides as the above idea, but I was thinking that I could put Skype on my Mac and use that to call my wife and parents on their home phones / cell phones. Would SkypeOut work in this situation? If so, would there be any extra charges? Would it even be worth it if I don't plan to use the service again for the rest of the year that my $30 would get me?



• I have a Cingular GSM phone, with the standard international dialing rates. It would thus cost me $2.29/min to call to the US, or $1.99/min if I were to sign up for the "World Traveler" coverage. I'm not really liking this option.



• Could I unlock my phone (Motorola V557) and purchase a rechargeable SIM once I get down there? If so, what would the advantages be?
  This service seems like it would be pretty easy, but it costs $40!



• I got an International Student Identity Card through my school, and it came with a little bit of talk time with a phone card service called Ekit. After the 10 free minutes it came with, it would cost $1.07 per minute to make calls. Seems sort of expensive to me. Some of the services here(especially "fast call") look much more reasonable (3.4 cents/min for "fast call") but are they trustworthy? How would I make calls -- payphones, my cellpone (I'm not sure about my roaming plan), the homephone of the people I'm staying with, or what?


Any advice/recommendations would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

posted by dondiego87 to travel & transportation (13 comments total)

You can use Skype to call a land line but there is a charge. usually it only a few cents/min. Alternatively get a calling card at a locutorio.
posted by JJ86 at 12:57 PM on May 3, 2007

I'd second JJ86's recommendation of buying one of the many calling cards from either a locutorio or kiosko of which there are plenty all over. There are various cards and they generally have their rates to the U.S. printed on them for you to compare. I generally buy the iPlan or Llamada Directa Internacional cards. You can use the cards almost anywhere by phoning a toll free number.

The rates here indicate a price of 0.12 pesos a minute from Cordoba. That is roughly US$0.04 a minute.

With regards to unlocking your cellphone and getting a prepaid card in Argentina, it's a good way to save money if you will want to make and receive calls within Argentina but will still be expensive for making international calls. A prepaid sim card with Movistar should cost around US$4.

Using SkypeOut to a landline/cellphone carries the same charge no matter where you are connecting from. I'd say this is a possible option but you'd need to connect to the internet first which would restrict you more than the prepaid phone cards.
posted by Gomez_in_the_South at 1:17 PM on May 3, 2007

When using SkypeOut, you don't need to sign on with $29.95 per year fee. Since you're only going to be away for 3 weeks, it looks like adding on a sum of money (I think the smallest is $10 at a time) to your account would be easier. Calls to both land lines and cell phones in the US cost 2.1 cents per minute.

Be careful where you're calling from when using prepaid cards. Sometimes additional charges apply if you're using them from a pay phone or locutorio.
posted by summit at 1:24 PM on May 3, 2007

Buy a phone card from a locutorio, that's what I did for the couple of months I was in S. America and it was the cheapest, simplest way to communicate back home (other than email).
"Tarjeta telefonica de estados unidos por favor"
posted by youthenrage at 1:29 PM on May 3, 2007

1) Get a local Argentinian number - via a local prepaid SIM card probably. Cingular won't unlock your phone last I heard ( I think only T-Mobile does of the major carriers), but you can find third party services that will do it for a fee.

2) Use Enjoy Prepaid to call home. 4.4 cents per minute for the lowest volume plan from Argentina. I use them all the time to call South Africa, they're great.
posted by chundo at 1:31 PM on May 3, 2007

These guys charge $20 to unlock your Cingular phone. Never used them though.
posted by chundo at 1:36 PM on May 3, 2007

On behalf of a friend:

I spent a whole semester in Argentina, and I found that Skype was the best and cheapest thing to use provided you have an active internet connection. You do have to pony up $10 to begin with, but the rates are cheap (~U$S0.03/minute if I remember), and that gives you somewhere around 8-10 hours of talk time. Plus, I liked the convenience of using my own headset/computer/etc to make calls.

That aside, if you won’t have steady internet access or if you will be on the go a lot and not want to try to find internet (there are very few internet cafes, but they do exist…), then a phone card is the best option. I don’t remember which brand exactly as I only used them once, but they’re generally AR$5 for about 30 minutes. It’s been a year since I was there so I don’t really remember, to be honest.

Hope it helps. Have fun down there; it’s a great country
posted by CipherSwarm at 2:22 PM on May 3, 2007

As said upthread, it's certainly possible to get a local SIM for your phone here. But I would warn against relying on your cell phone for making or even receiving international calls -- at least on the Movistar network, which is what I have. For one thing, it's expensive to make the calls. And while it's free to receive the calls, in my experience it only works half the time.
posted by veggieboy at 3:16 PM on May 3, 2007

Skype if you want to call land lines, google talk if you can talk to someone with a google account already (it's free).

To get the free Wifi for the above, try some hostels and hotels and bars that offer free wifi, such as:
http://www.baluchbackpackers.com/services.html

El Viejo Bar
L. N. Alem y San Martin
Marcos Juarez, Cordoba AR
posted by jldindc at 7:47 PM on May 3, 2007

Maybe this is a dumb question, but I haven't seen any clear information on this. How do Skype and phone cards work when I'm calling to a cell phone?
posted by dondiego87 at 8:31 PM on May 3, 2007

I used SkypeOut to call the US from Indonesia for months last year - I bought it in $10 chunks, and it ended up paying for over 450 minutes; it was by far the cheapest option, and the simplest as well, as I could call any land line or cell phone in the States. Totally worth it, super-simple, no language barrier with operators or whatever, and it worked fine even at less-than-broadband-speed internet places.

Could your family/friends install Skype on their home computers? Then you could install Skype on your computer, head over to El Viejo Bar (above), sip a delighful mug of yerba mate and catch up with the family for hours - this solution would be almost totally free and keep you mildly stimulated!

(On preview: Skype can't tell the difference between US cell and landline numbers because the US uses codes based on area, not based on, um, whether a phone is a landline or not. I called my mom's cellphone and my dad's landline and paid the same. It's just like instant messenger programs, really - except instead of user names, you've got phone numbers on your buddy list. There's a little tutorial thing on their website. I haven't used phone cards to call home.)
posted by mdonley at 8:40 PM on May 3, 2007

Try out the gizmoproject software, it seems like a skype alternative.
posted by dhruva at 12:00 AM on May 4, 2007

I used skype for two weeks while I was in the middle east. Lifesaver. Way easier than a cell,I just should have tested/paid before I'd gotten there.
posted by filmgeek at 10:18 PM on May 4, 2007