Guatemala
 

Went there for 6 days on a spur of the moment vacation. Roaming with Cingular or T-Mobile is $2-$3/min. Most intl. cards don't roam there. I had a CelTrek card - but their rates are also relatively high. $1.49.

Fortunately, there are 3 highly competitive networks there. You can buy prepaid SIMS for about $12 including 20 min. of airtime to cal U.S.
Calls to the U.S. are about 12 cents/min.! Incoming, of course is free. On one carrier, they run specials (may all carriers from time to time) where you get double airtime for your purchase. I spend $13 and got $26 worth of recharge credits That would have been over 200 min. of calling.

Problem - I couldn't get Voicestick to forward calls to my number. Couldn't get my VOIP carrier, Lingo, to forward either. With Lingo, the cell would ring, but the call wouldn't connect. With Voicestick, nothing happened. Dead air.
I had to spend $1.40/min. to take incoming calls on my T-M and then call people back. (I am on an old T-M roaming plan that is 25-65% cheaper than their current rates.)

I was going to try a test and get a SIM from a diff local carrier to see if that made a diff., but didn't get around to it.

Airport is all torn up and you don't pass any shops at all in exiting the airport. This is one case where I probably should have spent the $ to get a card from Telestial, especially since we arrived at night.

If anyone is going to Guatemala in the next couple weeks let me know. (The card is only good for another 3 weeks, i think, before you have to recharge it.)

...mike

Voicestick has been pretty awful lately with the number of test calls to international numbers (mostly my IOM sim). In most cases it's dead air and billing always shows a 60 mins charge. I stopped trying it since I got tired of calling voicestick customer service to ask for a refund. On each of the 4 tests that I did to my IOM sim I nothing hapened (dead air!)but I was charged for 60 minutes. Actually $18 and change. I did get refunded on each occasion though.

09 appears to work there with free incoming! UM also works with 0,79/min incoming charge.

Well, UM claims to work in Guatemala, but I was there three days ago and could not register on any of the three available networks. Had the same problem a couple months ago. So I would not count on UM for a trip to Guatemala.

Kupe

Actually, UM claims to work in quite a few countries. But, in reality they don't!

Since you seem to go there often, get a prepaid. Calls to the U.S. are about 10 cents! The cards are about $10, as i recall and come w. a small amount of airtime. If you PM me, i'll send you mine - but credits may have expired so the SIM might not be good any more.

...mike

Does any has a good idea, about a good prepaid-card in Guatemala? Doesn't matter if its a local prepaid or a global one. I personally need it for about 6 weeks in Guatemala, and I will mainly call US and German Numbers and will be called from German Phone-Numbers...

Thanks in advance...
Arne

edit: Phone is a tri-band SE K800i: so no GSM850, only 900, 1800, 1900

At least 2 of the 3 carriers sell prepaids for about $12US, incl. A couple dollars of airtime. Calls to the U.S. are about 10 cents/min. Occasionally at least one of he carriers wl have a 1 day special - twice the airtime credits s usual.
Dn't know about calls to Germa. It wuld be easy, tho to rute Germany clls thru a U.S. cal forwarder at 3 cents/min.

...mike

Can you buy a prepaid card without being a local?

I'm definitely not a local!<G>. No questions are asked. The shop even called in for me to add the extra time i bought since they knew I wouldn't be able to follow the Spanish prompts. Virtually all shops take U.S. dollars. Don't know about Euros. Hotel rates are quoted in dollars online as are car rentals. Hotels take credit cards - don't know about small shops as we pd. cash.
No place in the airport to buy them. The whole airport complex seemed to be under construction. Since we arrived late, had to wait until the next morning.

...mike