My boyfriend will be leaving to go to the Philippines and we dont know ways of contacting eachother. To my understanding, his current cell phone will not work there. His flight is in less then 24 hours so renting a global phone is out of the picture because the phone would have to be shipped to us. I'm in Hawaii, USA and he'll be there in the Philippines for the next 3 weeks.. Is there phones that he can rent at the airport in the philippines? how about calling cards for him contacting my cellphone, can he buy a calling card here in the US and use it up there? is there any other way that we can keep in contact? Does anyone have any kind of information about this situation?... thank you

Phone cards are the cheapest way to go but thats land line to land line I believe. otherwise use the internet.

Have you both considered downloading SKYPE in your computers?

Before we went to the Philippines, we contacted our cell phone service provider in the US and asked for an unlock code. I got the code and instructions via email. This will allow you to replace the SIM card.
WHen I arrived in Manila, I took the email to a cell phone service provider in one of the malls and the salesgirl was able to follow the instructions, replaced the card (which cost the equivalent of $1.35), and I bought a phone card to load with minutes.
WHen I got home in the US, I put the old SIM card back in , and it worked fine.

By the way, my US service provider told me it takes about 1.5 weeks to get the unlock code, but I got it in 3 days.
I used Globecomm in the Philippines, but inside the house I stayed I could not get a signal. I always had to go outside to use my cell phone. You may want to try some other outfit.

I stayed in the Philippines for 2 months recently and wrote about what I did to get cell phone service with a Tmobile phone I brought with me.

Instead of typing it all out here, I'll just link to the blog posts I wrote regarding these experiences:

http://jellykiss.com/fridayblog/?p=3119

To keep in touch with my sister and dad in the US while we were staying in the Camarines Sur province, I used Chikka online:

http://jellykiss.com/fridayblog/?p=3126

This was much cheaper than making phone calls internationally. I just used my laptop, downloaded the free software and could chat with my sister since she had an unlimited text messaging plan.

Hope this helps anyone wondering about what to do when they go and wanna have a functioning cell phone in the Philippines!