Cell Phones| Cell Phones and Cellular Service Providers in the Philippines |
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There are 2 types of service plans offered by all 3 cell phone companies. Post paid and prepaid. Post paid means you make as many calls as you want and pay your bill at the end of a monthly billing cycle. Prepaid means you have to pay for the service before you use it. You add money to your account, called a balance, and money is taken out of your balance every time you send a text or make a call. When your balance runs out, you can still receive calls and texts but you cannot initiate them. It is almost impossible for a foreigner to get a post paid plan and even most Filipinos don't qualify either. So more than likely, you're going to have to do what everyone else does and pay as you go with a prepaid plan. Prepaid plans are more expensive than post paid ones. The benefit of them is that it is easier to monitor your spending with a post paid plan because once your balance reaches zero, you cannot send any texts or make any more calls until you add more money to your account.
Each cell phone company has their own service plans so you have to know which plan you want. You choose which plan you want every time you load your phone and you can have more than one plan at the same time. Here are the prepaid plans for each cell phone company: Smart To load your phone, tell the sales clerk that you need to load your phone. Many clerks can only load phones on certain networks, so make sure they have the ability to load a phone on your network first. They will ask you what your cell phone number is and how much you want to load. Afterwards, you will receive a text message from the service provider stating that you just received a load, what the service plan is, and your new current balance. The conversation may go something like this:
In order to use a SIM card though, you're going to have to have a GSM enabled cell phone that takes SIMs. If you don't already have one, then you will need to purchase a SIM capable phone with GSM technology. This is easy in the Philippines as every cell phone I've ever seen here has GSM technology built into it and they all take SIM cards. More and more cell phones these days can use 2 SIM cards at the same time. A word of advice, buy your phone brand new from the mall. Do not buy phones off the street or in a second hand shop. Brand new phones are cheap enough, starting around 1,500 pesos, that you don't need to fuel crime by buying a stolen cell phone or buying one that doesn't work well and then not be able to return it. Unlike in America and some other countries, once you buy a product in the Philippines you cannot return it for any reason 99% of the time. Buy your phone brand new in a mall, not from a kiosk but from an actual cell phone store. |
There are 3 main cellular service providers in the Philippines. 
In the Philippines, adding money to your account is called loading. When your account reaches zero then you "have no load" and you will need to "load" your phone. To do this you will have to find a store that sells "phone loads". There are places everywhere that sell loads. Lots of Sari-Sari owners can load your phone for you and that's who most people rely on when it's time to load their phone. You can also find them in the malls and even 7-Eleven convenience stores sell phone loads. However, 7-Eleven chooses not to sell all the available services. For example they refuse to sell Smart's 20 pesos All Text plan.
To get service from a cell phone carrier, you will have to buy a SIM card. SIM cards are very cheap at about 40 pesos or less. You can buy them at the same places you buy cell phones, in convenience stores like 7-Eleven, at cell phone load kiosks in the mall, and even many sari-sari stores sell them. Just say you want to buy a SIM card and which carrier (Sun, Globe, Smart) you want. Each SIM card comes with it's own cell phone number. The cheapest SIM cards do not come with a balance so you'll have to load it first before you can use it. If you pay a high price for a SIM card, for example 500 pesos, then it should already come with a balance. You just put the SIM in your phone, turn the phone on and you're done. It's that easy. Also, unlike lots of other countries, you don't have to show ID to buy a SIM card. Anyone can buy one including tourists.