The evolution of cellular service in Uruguay

Warning: this entry is long-winded and somewhat technical. If you've little patience for either, skip this one...

It was interesting to see what happened with the two cellphones I'd brought with.

Now, I won't get into a boring treatise on radio frequencies and blablabla, suffice it to say I was prepared to use all three carriers if the opportunity arose. I got to use 2 out of 3. All of the carriers in Uruguay are pure GSM. To the American readers that means that a phone from T-Mobile or Cingular/AT&T(Deathstar) might work on a foriegn GSM network provided its unlocked. Unlocked means un-married from the carrier you bought it from. If you have to question whether your phone is unlocked, it's probably locked and needs to be unlocked. How you get it unlocked is outside the scope of this post. Alltel and SprintPCS users - don't even bother bringing your phone with to UY, there's no signal on the air thats compatible with it.

The three are (and I'll put asterisks next to the ones I had occasion to use)
Movistar*
CTI*
Ancel

I expected that T-mobile would automatically roam on Ancel. Nope. I could register on Ancel or CTI (i.e. in theory make or receive calls), but the T-mobile roaming service preferred to use Movistar. International GSM roaming is very neat-o but has a GIANT price tag associated with it. This blog entry has most things you need to know about hooking up your American GSM phone with local Uruguayan services and phone numbers.

I brought two phones with me. If I had it to do over again, I'd have brought three so I could access my $uper expensive T-mobile roaming service. Switching the GSM chips (your phone number, really) between phones is possible and physically very easy, but reprogramming all the fiddly little settings is a giant pain in the ass when you do it.

The two phones were a cheap Nokia handheld that I wouldn't shed any tears about it if it were lost or stolen, and an HTC Wizard (also known as T-mobile MDA). The Nokia is good for calls and text messages. The Wizard is a full-blown computer that can make use of all the features a good GSM network should offer - although its already obsolete because it doesn't support the highest speed data available now. What can I say, the thing's a year old!

I was quite discreet about the carrying and use of the Wizard - it's not a likely occurrence but very possible to have it either pickpocketed off me or (less likely) to have it robbed from me at knife- or gun- point. Or it could be just grabbed out of my hand on the street by someone who'd spotted me using it. The point is - it's not a good idea to make use of a super expensive cellular phone outdoors anywhere in Latin America.

To put super-expensive in perspective: Nokia has a model of phone that's targeted at the 3rd world. You can't buy it in New York, Paris or Rome. It's basic, white, has a black and white display and is good for voice calls and text messages. Nothing more. Price? 660 Uruguayan pesos in an Ancel store. What's that in dollars? Less then $35.00. For 660 pesos you get the phone and prepaid service on the Ancel network. Your service is voice and text messages, that's it. The HTC Wizard cost the equivalent of 8800 Uruguayan pesos - which is the equivalent of a month's salary for many locals. A thief who steals a phone like that can re-sell it (assuming it doesn't get black-listed when you report it stolen) and buy himself a used motorbike!

Prepaid service is just that with all three carriers you don't get a bill. You just buy scratch-off cards in various denominations from the street kioskos. When you run out of prepaid pesos on your account you can't dial calls or send text messages. However, you can receive calls and texts - because the callER to a cellphone in Uruguay pays for the airtime. (Most of the world operates this way actually.) Postpaid service is of course available but the minimum term is a year - not practical for the casual visitor.

CTI prepaid was easy to get. In fact, some stores had a promo where the SIM card (ok another technical term, sorry... GSM phones have a chip that contains the phone number of the user) is free provided you buy a certain quantity of prepaid airtime. CTI wants to know who you are - you have to provide a cedula or passport to get the chip. Their prepaid service is just voice and text messages. International text messages are impossible to send or receive through a CTI chip. No data service is made available, although their contractual "post-paid" subscribers can buy access for an extra charge. I imagine that an inbound international call to a CTI phone could be made but I wasn't that curious. Outbound international is blocked. Uruguay only!!

I got to do my own service provisioning because the phone I brought into the shop was the HTC Wizard. They'd never seen one, and it was in English. The woman behind the counter walked me through the procedure that would normally be done by the store. Pretty basic stuff... install the chip, let it find the signal, then dial star-something-or-other. A Spanish-language voice response system asks for the SIM card number, the IMEI (oops another technical term - each GSM phone has a worldwide unique serial number called IMEI) of the device, and the type and number of the ID card supplied by the user. Buy prepaid airtime and you're good to go with a telephone number of 096-xxx xxx. CTI is stingy about the length of time your number stays active. Despite multiple recharges my number will expire before the end of January 2008. It'll be interesting to see if I can resurrect it - IF I bother.

Movistar prepaid was easy to get. Why did I bother? It has data service - internet access! Of course I had two phones with me and I wanted to use both. I put the CTI chip in my bastard-stepchild cheap-o Nokia phone and gave the CTI number out to all my local friends. Why that one? The Nokia phone was for sure going to be with me all the time. The HTC Wizard was not going anywhere near a beach, a nightclub, perhaps not even out after dark. The Movistar dealer didn't care who I was, they just wanted the cash for the chip. $150 pesos or about seven dollars. That got me a phone number of 095-xxx xxx. I bought $1000 pesos worth of airtime. That's about 48 US dollars. I figured that would last me the whole trip.

Not so much. I grossly miscalculated how expensive the data tariff was. I was happily watching USA TV on my Wizard through Movistar's data service. I do it using slingbox, and I was getting throughput of about 170 kilobits/second - enough for a VERY viewable picture on the Wizard's small screen. Twenty minutes into nirvana the feed cut off. I called *222, the number for checking the balance left on the service. Zero pesos. Now that's a DAMN expensive pay-per-view. Won't do that again.

Getting the data service configured was a do-it-yourself job. The Movistar dealer didn't know how to configure my Wizard to make use of GPRS/EDGE (data & internet) services and gave me the address of a dealer who "probably could." I lived in Uruguay long enough to understand the basic fact: there is no profit in a 3rd party dealer configuring a foriegn phone on a prepaid account for a tourist to use as a toy. I decided it was a waste of time to make the trip. Instead I just got on the internet and found the particulars. And no, they are not on Movistar's web site. Google "movistar uruguay gprs settings." If you don't understand the results you'd better be prepared to talk the dealer into configuring whatever your device is. Not to be a prick, but don't message me asking how to do it. It's totally dependent on your device. Good luck!

Despite USD$48 spent on the trial run, the data service was practical for keeping up with email, MSN messaging, and some basic web browsing. The MSN messaging was particularly fun on an express bus between the Tres Cruces bus station in Montevideo and Maldonado when I went to visit a friend. I could also make international calls and send/receive international text messages. Easier to SEND that first text to a friend rather than tell them, hey, you can text me at +59895xxxxxx. Better to just have 'em reply. It's 20 pesos for an international text message (or roughly a buck for 160 characters) so its not particularly cheap at first blush. However keep this in mind: a postcard is going to cost you 10 pesos and then another 48 pesos to mail to the USA. Most postcard messages really aren't much more than 320 characters unless you write really really small. Also, that postcard isn't going to arrive for a month or two. This is near instantaneous. In that light, is it really so expensive?

Movistar was also the best in terms of prepaid phone number expiration. The expiration date of my Movistar chip is August 2008. I.E. when I go back in February it'll be plug 'n play.

A large percentage of the locals use Ancel. Ancel is the state-owned phone company's cellular network. They practice bureaucracy with a capital B. The acquisition and use of their services by a visitor is pretty pointless unless you're going to buy that $30.00 Nokia and put the chip from it into your phone. No Ancel dealer will just sell you a chip. Ancel wants you to follow the customs law to the dotted i and crossed t. Your foriegn phone must have a customs declaration document showing duty paid before they even consider issuing you with a chip. In short, unless you're local and you acquired your phone originally through an Ancel dealer (then of course you can use whatever phone you want, just don't bring it near the Ancel dealer/store for help) - Ancel is a giant pain in the ass.

International text messaging works inbound to Ancel phones, at least from T-mobile in the USA. My friend Ale and I went round and round with Ancel and T-mobile about it because I could send her messages and she would receive them. Her replies disappeared but she was charged for them. Typical of Ancel being a giant pain in the ass - they won't take a trouble report from their own subscriber seriously. She told them twice that it didn't work but was reassured that "everything was fine," each time. When I took it up with T-mobile and was persistent about it... I got a phone call one morning in very accented English from an Ancel technician who wanted me to send a text message to a special number that would trace it. A day or two later I got a text back from Ancel saying the problem had been identified and fixed. Ever since then Ale has been able to text me whenever she wants and its the most convenient way for us to communicate.

I swear, that morning several months back when I got that outbound international phone call FROM Ancel to my US phone to troubleshoot - I checked the newspaper to see if the headline was "hell freezes over."

So why do a large percentage of the locals use Ancel? In a word, COVERAGE. If you're Joe or Jane tourist and you're staying in Montevideo or the coastal area between Colonia and Punta del Este, you're not going to notice that Movistar and CTI's coverage isn't as extensive as Ancel's. In those areas, you're fine. However if you go inland (in the "interior" as the locals put it) you're going to see NO SERVICE more often than you'd like if you're on Movistar or CTI.

Ancel and Movistar both offer 3G services. Neither of my devices were capable of accessing anything 3G, and the services are only offered on a postpaid basis. However people that I worked with in the course of my trip were using both Ancel and Movistar 3G service and they loved it. 3G means third generation, or FAST DATA. Theoretically download speeds are 2 megabit under ideal conditions. At least in downtown Montevideo - the service works as advertised. The devices are offered as a DSL replacement. The device is a USB key with built-in radio and windows drivers. Pretty cool stuff.

Also on this 2007 visit, all three networks can interchange text messages. This was not possible in 2005. Each of the three networks was an island unto itself. This was fine for the locals who had the patience to deal with Ancel, but for the expats it was a pain in the ass. However it was a small price to pay for not having to deal with those rude bureaucratic sons of bitches.

Comparing and contrasting 2007 to 2004... night and day. My imported phone - a CDMA Motorola Timeport, was relatively easy to activate on Movicom (now known as Movistar). It could receive but not send text messages (a limit of the phone). I'd also brought with a TDMA motorola of some sort, making sure it was on Ancel's list of acceptable phones. They would not touch it, at least not from me. A local friend who knew someone got it activated. GSM was just being released but only on a limited basis by Ancel. To get it you had to buy a brand-new phone from Ancel and the minimum price of any of their phones was at least USD$300 at the time. None of the networks could interchange text messages. CTI did not exist until 2005, launching as a GSM-only network. Lots of locals bought CTI only to find they could not text their friends on Ancel and vice versa. I had CTI at the time because my Timeport was a little dated and CTI had a good deal on a Sony Ericsson phone. In mid 2005 Movicom changed names to Movistar. The company had been sold from BellSouth (a now non-existent US company thats since been borg'd into the AT&T deathstar) to Telefonica from Spain. Movistar promptly began to phase out CDMA in favor of GSM. I wasn't around to see how they handled the shift of the CDMA customers to GSM as I'd gone back to the USA.