There are three cell phone companies in Colombia that I know of: Comcel, Movistar, and Tigo (formerly Ola). All of them suck. But cell phones are as necessary here as they are most places, so you just have to hope for the best.
Who Pays for the Call
In Colombia the standard is that the person making the cell phone call pays for it, so if you call another cell phone, the person you call doesn’t use any minutes. This is good for poor people, who can own cell phones and receive calls for free, but usually can’t afford to buy minutes very often. My maid, for example, wears her cell phone around her neck, and if I or any of her other employers need her, we can call. She doesn’ t have a home phone, of course.
When you call a cell phone from your home phone (telefono fijo–”fixed”), you pay for the call per minute, and usually at a not-very-low rate. It’s kind of like calling long distance in the US without a plan, and you get billed for those calls when the phone bill arrives.
In Colombia, the cell phone prefix acts just like a city code, which is to say it’s the equivalent of a area code in the US. You know what company someone uses by the prefix, for example; my phone is 316, which makes it a Movistar phone. So, there is no such thing as calling a cell phone long distance–the system is nationwide.
My Prepaid Plan
I have a prepaid cell phone that I inherited from a friend who left the country last year. That’s the best way to get one, because the paperwork required to get your own is something almost impossible to conceive of until you go through the process. I can buy minutes at the grocery store and lots of other places, and I use the phone whenever I want or need to, but I don’t use it for long chats with friends. It ends up costing me the equivalent of about $20 USD per month, which I consider not too bad since I didn’t have to go through the paperwork hassle to get a plan. Also, there’s no such thing as rollover minutes here, so if I had a plan, I would just be wasting the minutes that don’t get used when I am in the US for a month or so at at time.
Getting a Postpaid Cell Phone Plan in Colombia is a Pain in the Ass
You need 1×1 passport photos, statements of income, national ID cards, references from you employer and other people, verifications of everything. Then you need to sit for a couple hours to discuss all this, only to be told that the phone you wanted to buy or the plan you wanted to sign up for is not available. Come back another day, or go to another office, and start over.
My friend Jeff last year went through the process and finally got his plan and his phone. After four months of using it with no problems, paying his bills online and even buying extra minutes, he was cut off with no warning. When he went to the office to ask what had happened, he was eventually told that they had been unable to reach one of his references four months before. So, no more service.
The Cell Phone Companies
The largest company is Comcel, but people who use them say dropped calls are just about standard with that company. But, their reception area is the best in smaller towns, so for people who travel a lot, it’s the company to go with.
Movistar is the second largest, and used to be BellSouth. They are better about keeping your connection till you decide to terminate the call. But, there are many areas, especially outside of large cities, where Movistar won’t be able to find a signal.
Tigo, which until recently was known as Ola, is by far the smallest company, and does a lot of business in prepaid plans (though they offer post-paid as well). Good credit is very difficult to come by in Colombia–in fact, most people have either bad credit or no credit–and Tigo is a little less stringent along these lines. Reception outside the large cities is practically nonexistent.
Still, when you walk down a crowded Bogota street, you’ll see the majority or people you pass with phones attached to their ears.
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