Santiago - Post Report Question and Answers
Do you have any recommendations regarding mobile phones? Did you keep your home-country plan or use a local provider?
We use Google Fi. No issues. My spouse has an embassy-issued local number which is occasionally useful, but really Google Fi and WhatsApp work for 95% of things. - Dec 2020
I use prepaid service since I travel constantly for work. Service is good and inexpensive. - Jun 2019
Entel service ins good. Claro sometimes has issues. I have heard of anyone using WOM. Several people use Virgin as they are the easiest to provide a sim card until you have your RUT. - Feb 2016
Meh. You can buy here or bring yours unlocked. Expect to spend some money if you want internet access or if you use your phone a lot. - Nov 2014
Expensive! Do pay-as-you-go plans. - Oct 2014
It can be difficult to get a pre-paid plan, but pay-as-you-go is easy to get. - Sep 2011
You will need a quad-band GSM phone down here. If you bring a normal cell phone from the US, it will not work in Chile. U.S. standards are actually behind with the approved frequency standard. - Jul 2010
Good luck figuring out the dialing system in Chile! - Apr 2009
There are several cell phone companies here. Claro/Codetel and Orange are the 2 biggest companies. What we did and many other people we know do is bring the cell phone from the states and have it re-configured for use on the network here. Verizon phones tend to reconfigure well for use on Codetel/Claro's network and Sprint and Virgin Mobil phones tend to configure well for Orange use. We just purchase phone cards that give you a certain amount of minutes. It takes a couple months for us to use those minutes up, but we don't use our cell phones a whole lot. If you are a heavy cell phone user or like to text msg a lot, signing up for a plan would probably be your best bet. - Sep 2008
They're expensive to call from a landline, but as always, convenient and nice to have. - Jul 2008
