Cell Phone connection in Chile & Peru
 

Do any of the international cell phones such as Mobal, work well in any areas of Chile & Peru? Or is it better to just forget about it and leave it home?

Our Mobal does not work there, but there might be one that does. Check the website www.mobal.com

Thanks for your reply. The $100 Mobal is listed to work in Peru and Chile. My question is more clearly to ask whether there are any areas of the 2 countries where they actually can function. Anyone know?

bump

I have a different carrier - AT&T. And when I was in Peru several months ago (Jun-2007), I was able to send text messages back to the US. I probably could have called, however after talking w/ AT&T the cost for texting was less expensive and served my purposes vs. a phone call.

We were just in Peru and brought our AT&T iPhone with us with international service. However, we never used it. Skype is pretty much everywhere in the country and so we were able to call home and talk and see our kids every day for nothing. The one time we needed a phone (to call the grandparents and tell them to turn on the computer so we could skype them), it was significantly cheaper to just use the phone at the internet cafe than to use our own phone. I was glad I had a phone with us in case of some emergency but we never, ever used it.

Have a great trip.
Taitai

Thanks to each of you who have responded here. I think I have decided from your ideas that it would make most sense for me to just check email daily in case of possible emergencies back home. I always carry an AT&T phone card as well.

Alternatively, you could rent a phone while you're there. When we arrived in Lima, there was a whole sales team of women offering to rent cell phones for the duration of your stay. We didn't do it, so I don't know how much they were - but presumably cheaper than buying a phone that would work there.