Philippine Cell Phone Roaming Outside The Rp

[Mr Lee]

In past months the Philippine government forced the cell providers to extend the length that a load will expire to 120 days from the earlier 60 days, (There was a post made about that earlier on) so that basically means 3 reloads a year if the load is not consumed before then. Pretty inexpensive way to keep the same phone number and to make it easy for friends and relatives to keep in touch while out of the country. I do not know how many of you have your phones roaming outside the Philippines but for us it is a very easy and inexpensive way for the family and friends to keep in touch and while we could load just p300 cards every 120 days, we usually load at least p500 whenever we do load and that usually happens before the 120 days are up. So to us that relates to around US $6 to US $10 about every 4 months because the p500 cards can usually be bought for p480. My wife and I have had the same Smart phone number for about 8 years now and we always put it on roam and reload it while away with those cards that we buy before leaving each year. I am curious how many others roam when outside the Philippines and how you handle your loading? Anyway this is what we do and I am always open to better ideas, so please feel free to let me know if you have a better way to do this. Before leaving the Philippines and while in the airport, we type in ROAM ON and text it to 333 and upon returning we text ROAM OFF and send it to 333. Please note that this is how it is done with Smart prepaid and other companies are done differently and I am not sure how post paid is done since we never felt the need to own a post paid phone.While in the Philippines and just before we leave, we purchase the number of cards we will need for the time we will be out of the Philippines and usually an extra card or two since they are usually good to hold for about 1 year from purchase and have an expiration date on the back (be sure to get the latest cards with the latest expiration dates on them), and then if we run out before our return, we just ask a friend or relative to buy one for us and email or text the number on the card to us ahead of the next reload.As I said above, the loads now expire in 120 days, so we make sure to keep the load up to date and always make sure to keep at least p100 balance on our phone to roam, and then once we reload we make sure to use that p100 or we would lose it anyway upon the 120th day.We usually reply with Chikka.com which is free for us (and you) and Chikka allows up to 3 replies for each phone number and with each account (we) a person has. Hint hint. Sometimes family and friends reply to us on Chikka and I think that cost them p2 and then we can continue to reply to them on there and go to more than 3 replies when extended back and forth's are required to handle a situation. Of course we also use the phone for replies from time to time but this way family can keep in touch with us for just the same rate a text would cost if we were in the Philippines, but it does cost us p20 for each reply with our Philippine phone. Note here, it requires that you have a quad band and sim card type phone to work in both countries and an unlocked phone to be able to put in the Philippines sim card. The US require 850 mhz and 1900 mhz and the Philippines requires at least to have the 900 mhz but works better when you have 900 and 1800 mhz, so therefore a quad band phone will work the best in all areas that cell service is available. Also when we do return to the Philippines the added benefit has been that we then get to use all the free text we have accumulated while loading those p500 cards in the states since free text never expires unless you let your load expire without reloading before the expiration time. I think it is a win win situation for those of us who have a lot of friends and relatives who may not have computers or may not have easy access to one or do not wish to learn how to operate one, as most of relatives do not and most do not even seem to wish to learn.So how do you do it and does anyone have any tips to help others keep in touch?