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.

Uruguay

My business signed a contract last week with another one. Here we are at the contract signing in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Impressions of Uruguay

Why on earth am I writing about Uruguay? For right now I will leave that out. Not important. :-)

But anyway... The country is less TITS-up than it was.

See?

I think 50% off means you only get one.

But seriously, it's a women's clothing store. They just call it TITS because its got shock value in English and is really just a sound in Spanish. They would pronounce it TEETS.

Mujica, Everywhere you want him to be

The name of the issuing bank is obscured and the number on the card is a dummy one, don't bother trying to use it :)

Before I left for Uruguay I had a little joke made up. The reactions that it got when I paid for things were usually pretty strong - 90% raucous laughter, 10% severe frown. Those that laughed asked questions and I told them it was just a good joke. The severe frown crowd did not say a word and I kept a poker face.

My Uruguayan friends enjoyed it even more than I did - my friend Ale and I were out at a "Mexican" food place in Pocitos. The ambience was almost authentic Mexican and the food was... well, not TOO freezer burned. It was equally authentic Mexican as Chinese food is in Uruguay. It was a good try I suppose. TGI Fridays in BsAs certainly isn't any better than this was.

But it shows that the economy is better for people to be able to spend money on things like that, I guess.

When we paid for the meal using Mujica-card the mozo (waiter) got about two meters away from the table and stopped in his tracks. As for Ale, she was screaming with laughter at that point. There was suddenly a group of employees gathered around it pointing and laughing. I was pointed out as the perpetrator and I smiled and waved. The cashier stared really hard at the machine to see if the transaction would actually go through (which of course it did). The mozo was still laughing when he brought it back for signature.

Arrival in Uruguay

I'd decided that it would be "easier" to fly to Buenos Aires. I left Phoenix on the 21st of November. It's quite a long trip to get this far south of the equator.

I arrived in Buenos Aires by way of Atlanta on time at 8:35 am local time on the 22nd. It was a very smooth entry into the country... baggage arrived very fast, customs and immigration formalities were quick and most importantly there was an HSBC ATM machine in plain sight right outside immigration.

The lady in front of me helpfully advised that she'd not seen anyone get any more than $300 Argentine Pesos from the machine. (It's about $100 USD) No big deal, I wasn't going to spend that much in cash in the next 6 hours before the ferry boat left for Montevideo.

I know better than to flag down a cab in Argentina. It's not a good idea. Too many unofficial cabs on the streets, its potentially risky. The risk is not high but its there. I went to a kiosk in the Ezezia airport and prepaid a "remise" (a curious South American Spanish word for "limo") with a credit card. That way there is no negotiation about fee, no re-negotiation about fee upon arrival, no gimmicked meter to wonder about... it's just a better way to travel.

I loaded my bags into the car - the driver had opened the trunk - and off we went. Generally in this part of the world when you pay a fixed price (or whats on the meter) that's all you pay, tipping is not customary. Thus the driver is not going to go out of his way to help you load your luggage, unless you're elderly or female. Then other cultural norms kick in... :)

I turned on my cellphone. Supposedly T-Mobile would roam in Argentina and Uruguay, although certainly not cheaply. Strangely, the price of roaming in Argentina and Uruguay is the same as that of roaming in Mexico. Having seen the bill already from a couple of cross-border trips to MX I knew not to use my phone like I was at home :)

I made a couple of quick calls - a friend in Phoenix to let him know I'd arrived. Mom. My friend Ale in Montevideo to let her know that I was pretty definitely going to be on Buquebus (the ferry between BsAs and MVD) arriving 8pm Uruguay time.

The cab ride in heavy traffic was otherwise boring so I played with the phone. Seems T-mobile has it programmed to prefer Telefonica although the phone would register no problem on the other networks. I put it back on Telefonica because I'd read that the other networks were voice-only, no data or SMS roaming features.

We arrived at Puerto Madera about an hour later - that's the name of the Buquebus terminal. Having collected all my bags and shlepping them into the terminal I verified that my e-ticket was all I needed (Buquebus has a web purchase site that's just a little quirky and I would not recommend it to non-Spanish-speakers). They had no lockers for storage of luggage so it looked like I was trapped there for the day. I sort of wanted to go over to the Avenida Florida pedestrian mall but no way was I going to do that with a huge quantity of baggage. May as well have a big sign on me saying "rob me," doing that.

I camped out in the cafeteria part of the terminal. It was 10:00 AM and they were filling the steam table with the food for lunch. Actually it was pretty much filled. I asked the cashier if I could get lunch but was told no, not til noon. Ok, no problem. She was very gracious about letting me stick my bags out of the way behind the cashier's station though.

I got the limited offerings available - a couple of pre-packaged salami and cheese sandwiches, orange juice, yogurt, and a tiny little (to my American eyes) cup of diet coke.

On my next trip south I will make a point of bringing a very large plastic cup with me, the little dinky drink glasses that everyone has just don't work well.

I decided to be adventurous and not take the cheese off the sandwiches. It actually was pretty tasteless as cheese go, in other words tolerable. The cafe had wifi so I was watching the Macy's thanksgiving day parade via slingbox from the USA. After I got bored with that I started people watching. Very easy to spot the Americans: there is an utter lack of english-language signage about where to buy tickets and they all had a "deer in the headlights" expression. I wandered about with my bags for a bit establishing that the earliest I could check my bags was a couple hours away.

I decided to kill time in the travel agency part of the operation. It was the sole area that was air conditioned and it was probably about 25 degrees and humid that day. I was just reading my copy of The Economist and waiting. Several Americans walked up to me with that deer in the headlights look and said "Are you American?"

"Yes."

"Well I took a number but I'm not sure what it'll sound like when I get called and I need a ticket for the trip to Montevideo."

"You're in the wrong place. Go out of here, past the cafeteria and into the big hall. They sell tickets in a small window immediately to the left of the Banco Republica de Uruguay. It's not well marked, look for a sign that says 'ventas'"

This conversation was repeated at least 5 times with various confused tourists while I read my magazine in air condtioned comfort.

Finally I could check my bags. Off they went, gone. I was down to my very heavy backpack (I think on my next trip I will find a way to carry only the macbook and not both the mac and the thinkpad.... way too heavy...) and my nifty Sanrio Badtz-Maru messenger bag. As you pass into the departure lounge you clear Argentine and Uruguayan immigration controls. American passport out for the Argentines and Uruguayan cedula showing residency for the Uruguayans. Bang, done. My passport was still stamped by Uruguay but with the notation RL inside the stamp (i.e. legal resident, no limit).

The trip over was uneventful. It's like being on a plane but everyone is talking on their cellphone for most of the way - the boat is very close to the Uruguayan and Argentine coasts. Mobile coverage is just a little "too" good. The experience of being inside a "plane like" environment with all the cellphone chatter makes me strongly against the authorization of US air carriers to allow cellphone usage on flights!

As we got closer to Uruguay my phone registered on Movistar. Actually after leaving Argentina my phone was not showing network names - just five digit numbers to indicate the network. But I digress. I called Ale to let her know we were almost there.

The boat arrived and it felt profoundly weird to be stepping off that boat and onto land, onto Uruguayan soil once again. Arriving this time under much different circumstances than my departure had been. The bags finally were disgorged from the boat and Uruguayan customs chose not to do any further examination of my stuff. I exited customs and looked around the familiar terminal. It had not changed a bit.

Ale was waiting. She was frantic as she'd just had a minor car accident and needed to deal with police and insurance etc., but as we drove around to find the closest Junta de policia to the accident location I noticed something profound.

Very little had visibly changed.

That was not necessarily true, but the visible reality was there was DAMN little change.

We found the police office and awaited the insurance adjuster. Globalization is everywhere - the company was AIG - we were parked right off of the street where the interdepartmental buses pass out of Montevideo. It was VERY strange to see the TPM bus headed for Pando... I'd been on it SO many times. The COPSA bus headed for Salinas and Atlantida... I'd been on IT so many times. And they'd not changed a bit, same buses really.

After the hour long process of getting a police report and the insurance paperwork done - Ale was near inconsoleable about the whole thing - we finally finished. Throughout the process it was clear that neither the cops nor the insurance guy spoke english so I cheered her up with random comments in English.

It was finally quite dark (9:30 pm) by the time we made our way over to her apartment where I would be staying for most of my time in MVD.

Why was I there? I have a business here in Arizona with a client who needs a complicated software development project done. Life came full-circle (karma, really) to bring me back to Uruguay to make use of the contacts I'd made on the first somewhat-ill-fated sojourn... I was returning as an investor, a client. A quite different experience. The following days would definitely bear that out.

What about the family members who will never return from Iraq?

George Bush Jr. had a great verbal jerk-off session in the media today. On opening military airspace to commercial planes for the holidays:

"These failures carry some real costs for the country, not just in the inconvenience they cause but in the business they obstruct and the family gatherings they cause people to miss,' the president said. "We can do better."

What about the dead family members who will never return from a war that got started based on LIES? They sure as hell will be missed. When will it end?

Milennials blecch

The 20's crowd that I am seeing in the workforce are a bunch of selfish, overindulgent, sissy, spoiled brats who fall to pieces when they receive the least little bit of criticism. Sorry your parents suck at parenting. Guess they should have taught you that life can be tough.

Levity

Ok, deal. I'm having a shitty week so you're all gonna suffer with me.

GI Joe - no longer a US soldier? Might not be such a bad idea.

GI Joe may now stand for "Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity", with its star representing a vague multinational force.

Hasbro's character may no longer be cast as American. Hasbro has backed away from the "Great American Hero" tagline since, not surprisingly, a film showing the character as an American soldier would not play well pretty much anywhere abroad.

It's a big patriotic issue in the US where, also unsurprisingly, the average guy on the street has no idea what a horrible image our country has in the rest of the world.

If only the US-based supporters of GI Joe would come out in support of the withdrawal of real-life GI Joe's from the Iraq quagmire. So much ado about a doll that's made in China.

State of Arizona - one of the USPS' 50 largest customers

Oh man, byzantine. Want a state tax number for payroll taxes? Fill in the form. The CPA says just send in the form without payment because there isn't a fee.

State of AZ spends 41 cents to mail it back asking for a $12.00 check.

I write a check for $12.00 off the business account and send it back.

State of AZ spends 41 cents to mail it back saying they don't need the check after all, they requested it in error, check is enclosed in the envelope.

State of AZ spends a further 41 cents to mail me my tax number which is going to be my federal tax ID - which we knew was going to be the case all along.

Unemployment insurance? Sole members of an LLC are not entitled to this. I don't need to pay in because I can't collect if I become unemployed. So I get a call from the AZ Department of Economic Security about my application or lack thereof.

"You didn't apply for a number."
"No, I'm the sole member of an LLC, it would do me no good."
"You know you're going to get a letter every month reminding you that you don't have a number?"
"But I've just told you I'm the sole member of an LLC and my CPA's instructed me that I do not need the number. Can't you mark it on the file?"
"No., we'll send you a letter each month reminding you."
"Is there an enforcement mechanism that's going to kick in if I don't respond? My status as sole member is not going to change anytime soon."
"You really should send us back a letter reminding us that you're the sole member."
"Each month?"
"Well sometimes we'll put it on the file for three or four months it just depends who you get."
"But each letter should be responded to?"
"Yes."

State income tax? I had to revisit my 2005 taxes and pay about a hundred bucks. They wanted a little more in penalties but I just wasn't going to pay it before the end of October. They spent 41 cents to send me a letter advising me that the amount necessary to pay before 11/31 went up by 3 cents.