Telephones
In 1998, the national telephone company, EMETEL, was split in two ahead of planned privatization: Andinatel , serving the sierra and the Oriente, and Pacifictel for the coast and Galapagos. Unfortunately no buyers could be found, and the system remains uncompetitive and inefficient, despite the new names. Negotiations with possible buyers are still ongoing, and it's thought a deal will be done some time in the near future, hopefully providing better service and possibly lower prices. Most towns (and many villages) have a telephone office (daily 8am-10pm, except in remoter places), and domestic calls are relatively straightforward and reliable from these. Before you make a domestic call from a phone office, you'll normally be given a plastic token from the counter, with your cabin number on it. In some older offices you have to tell the clerk the number you want, and wait in the cabin for your phone to ring, which shows a connection has been made. In others you'll be able to dial the number yourself. At the end of the call, you hand back the token at the counter and pay for the calls you've made. There's a three-tiered tariff system for calls within Ecuador: a minute's worth of local calls costs around $0.03, regional calls $0.08, and national calls $0.13. Calls to cellular phones (prefixed tel 09) are charged at $0.47 a minute. You can also buy tokens ( fichas ) at phone offices for the few remaining, prehistoric-looking public phones - though it's easier to use the phones in shops and kiosks, or the good (but more expensive) cellular public phones maintained by Porta and Bell South, which use prepaid phonecards, usually sold in one of their nearby shops (look for the sign in the window). International calls are frighteningly expensive: three minutes to North America costs $6.5, $10.4 to Europe and Japan, and $12.35 to the rest of the world. You'll have to leave this amount at the counter ( caja ) as a deposit, but if you expect to speak for more than three minutes, it may be worth leaving a larger deposit as the clerk will often get jittery and cut you off if you go much beyond the amount you've handed over. If you speak for less time than you paid for, you'll get a refund.
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