HOW MUCH DO PHONE CALLS COST?

The Chilean phone system is very competitive and there are many different ways to make phone calls.  After a couple of inquiries from visitors and staff on the subject, I decided to make a quantitative comparison of some of the alternatives.  I thought the results were interesting enough to put this summary on our WWW page so that it would be accessible to staff and visitors.   I will try to keep it up to date from time to time since these rates are quite volatile.

This comparison is not intended to be exhaustive.  There are too many alternatives to investigate everything.   I have concentrated on the cost of calls to the US as a representative marker since rates/times/discounts are too complicated to try to unsnarl  the cost of every call for every carrier in a coherent fashion.

I think this list is fairly representative of the variations.  The differences are striking.  Costs for a five minute call to the States ranged from CP$695 (US$1.54) dialing direct from the recinto to CP$6216 (US$13.74) using an AT&T credit card.  I knew AT&T was pricey but I certainly had not appreciated what a ripoff it is!  Visitors be warned.    BTW, don't shed any tears for Entel.  The intrinsic cost of a phone connection to the States is less than US$.01/minute, so they are still making lots of money even at their direct dial rate of US$.31/min.

Kadur and I have gone over the telephone bills and done an empirical study of the actual charges so that we wouldn't be relying on someone's word for the direct dial prices.   These rates are adjusted from time to time for inflation (now running at about .5%/month). This is not precisely correct. The rate to call the U.S. rose 5% between February-December, 1998, as expected, while the rate to call the rest of the world only rose by 3% and the domestic rate increased by 22% during the day and 32% at night. It's still cheap, but the rate of increase is obviously not simply an inflation adjustment.

The following is a summary of the information I have at this time.   The dates are when the rates were valid.  I will be glad to include any additional information which anyone might have about how much it costs to call by other routes, or correct this information if anyone finds an error in it. Does someone have the current MCI and/or Sprint rates? How about the other Chilean carriers? (VTR, Satel, etc...)

Important! This page is somewhat out of date. It was written about two years ago when the exchange rate of the Chilean Peso was about 480 per dollar and no one has updated it in a year or two. The exchange is now up to 700. Still, in general the same principles still apply if you scale the rates.

Here are a few more telephone tidbits which may interest you:

• In the States you can buy cheap calling cards issued by companies no one has ever heard of at most convenience stores and equivalent locations. These cards usually work ok and can often be quite convenient and are a lot cheaper than AT&T.  Not all these cheapo cards can be used to call Chile. The only way to find out how much of a call you get for your money is usually to make a call and see how fast the credit decreases. Be careful of these companies though. They often advertise a cheap rate per minute, but have a fixed charge of a couple of dollars per call so that the calls aren't really cheap at all. I once bought a $10 card which advertised US $.05 per minute to Chile but had an unadvertised $2.50 per call charge and had so few lines to Chile that it was impossible to make a call anyway.

The companies which issue these cards are quite variable in the quality of service they offer. Buy one with a modest cost first, see how well it works and how much you pay per minute. They all expire in a fixed time from their date of first use so use it until it is dead and throw it away. Don't stick it in your wallet for a rainy day.

The best cheap card that I know of to call Chile is an outfit called IDT.  Call them and they will issue you a code number.  Give them your credit card number and they will give your code number the amount of credit you specify.   It currently costs 18 US cents a minute to call Chile from the US via IDT.   The quality is a bit variable, but it is almost always good enough.   Call 1-800-989-4382 to set up an account.    You can call the States from Chile using IDT but it isn't especially cheap in that direction.
 

• You might be interested in knowing that airlines usually keep a pile of throwaway credit cards under the counter to give away to annoyed passengers who are delayed and need to make phone calls. If you are ever inconvenienced by an airline, tell them you need a couple of cards to call your mother-in-law and they'll probably give you some to keep you happy. Don't save them. These cards usually have an even shorter lifetime than the ones you buy in a supermarket.

 
• Recinto residents cannot use a different long distance company as their default long distance service provider. It isn't clear why anyone would want to do this since our rate with Entel is much better than the competition.

Should you want to use another carrier for whatever reason, you can do it by getting an appropriate credit or prepaid card, which is easy. Note that dialing direct is very much cheaper than using an Entel card.

22 April 1998
Updated 27Jan99

Tom Ingerson