Job Discussion Forums

eric blair · Joined: 02 Mar 2006 Posts: 16

Congratulations on getting a seperate forum!

I'm taking a basic Nokia purchased (new and original) in Saigon to Colombia.

2 questions, will it work and where can I get a sim card in Bogota for it?

travelgoddess · Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:32 am Post subject: this was fun

to make a long story short, I knew from posts here and elsewhere that it would cost about $5US to unlock my US cell phone. My US company refused to do so before I left cause they said I needed to be a customer for over 90 days first. Yeah, whatever.

SO, first I asked around like mad and was told repeatedly to go to Comcel to get this done. I finally had time one day when I was near Calle 40 and the universities around there. I went to a Comcel on Carrera Septima (7th Street) and asked them. Although my Spanglish was WAY off, the man there was super sweet and wrote down the terminology to use when asking to have the phone unlocked and buying a new, local sim card. It is: "Liberacion de bandas que te servo la sin."

He then gave me the address to a Comcel "nearby" where I could get this done. 20 blocks later I found a Comcel that would do this, and the reason I am not adding the address to this post is because they quoted 55,000 COP (about $27 USD) to unlock the phone, get a new sim card and start service. Um, no. I thanked him and said I would think about it. HA! I was not paying that much for a phone I got for free in the US to be used here!

A few days later a friendly and helpful local friend took me to a market that I am pretty sure is not so um on the up and up, shall we say. Even with him there with me we were quoted one price, and then another and had to wait about an hour total, but we got it done. It ended up being 25,000 COP for the unlocking, new sim and service starting, with a little bit of credit on the phone.

Although this was an interesting experience, unless you are desperately attached to your foreign cell phone, I think it would be MUCH easier to just buy a phone and start service with that when you get here.

yaramaz · Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 2:28 pm Post subject:

What if our phones aren't locked? In Turkey, you have to buy your own phones and get sim cards separately. You can have as many sim cards as you want and use them interchangeably. My Turkish sim works when roaming in Canada so I am pretty sure it's tri-band. Can I safely guess that I can slide a Colombian one in just as easily with nothing to unlock?

travelgoddess · Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:02 pm Post subject: In theory

you should be able to just buy a sim card then.

lozwich · Joined: 25 May 2003 Posts: 1536

In December I was toying with the idea of unblocking my phone so I could use it in the USA. I saw lots of shops advertising to "desbloquear" telephones for $10,000COP. That doesn't come with the new sim card and so forth though.