In touch

In touch
First posted 01:14am (Mla time) Mar 10, 2006
By
Inquirer

I WAS in California when Proclamation 1017 was issued. That was the time I got to appreciate both the potentials and limitations of high-tech communications.

Thanks to the international cell phone roaming facility, I got word about 1017 by text messages from friends in the Philippines and Belgium! I rushed to a computer to try to get news from the Inquirer site on the Internet, but it looked like a million other Filipinos were of the same mind. Traffic was very bad and all I could get were the headlines.

I then turned to cable TV, switching from one channel to another. ABC, CBS, NBC were featuring reality shows and talk shows. Fox was busy attacking American liberals. CNN was featuring a hostage incident in Arizona. The smaller stations had televangelists and telemarketers on screen.

When the dust settled, I got connected to the BBC through the Internet. CNN eventually picked up on the Philippines, showing footage of what looked like street riots, interspersed with videos of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo proclaiming 1017, without her voice. Text messages that continued to come in from friends and periodic checks with INQ7.net's Breaking News -- as in every three or four hours -- actually kept me more updated than if I had been at home.

We are fortunate, indeed, to live in an age of instant communications. The technology is especially important when you're constantly on the road. So let me share some of what I've learned.

'Fong kah'

Cell phones have become indispensable for travel. For overseas trips, it's important to bring your own cell phone with your Philippine SIM. Make sure to have this activated for international roaming. This allows your friends to send you text messages at P1 each, the regular local rate. Sending messages out is another matter, because you get charged by your Philippine service provider, as well as by that of the country you're visiting. Each text message costs P10 to P20, after taxes. But be careful with calls. If someone calls you from the Philippines and you answer, the call is charged to you, and at very high rates. If you call out, you get charged with the rates of the country you're visiting, and again, that can come up quite high. Once I had to pay something like P250 per minute.

Remember that this applies as well to local calls, meaning if you're in the United States and calling a US number, you will be charged the American mobile phone rates, something like P25 to P50 a minute.

If you're going to be in another country for an extended period of time, it may be more cost-effective to just buy a prepaid SIM card there. You would then pay the local rates and could avail of discounts and other special deals. Get help, though, from a local because information materials are rarely in English.

An even cheaper alternative is to buy prepaid phone cards. You can get this in different denominations and they give you a local number to call, with a PIN number that you input. In the United States, prepaid cards allow you to call home for as low as 15 cents (P7.50) a minute. You save as well on calls within North America, at something like one cent a minute. Again, check with local residents or Filipino expats for the cards with the best deals and on how to buy them. In Thailand, walk into any one of the thousands of 7-11 stores and sing out "fong kah" if you're looking to buy a phone card.

VoIP

Cell phones are wonderful -- there's something exciting about being able to be in touch from anywhere you are. And I mean anywhere. I've sent text messages out while sitting in the ruins of the Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Borobodur in Indonesia. But while cell phones are convenient, the cheapest way to communicate in this high-tech age is still through computers. There is, of course, the e-mail, which keeps you in touch with family, friends and officemates. (Did I hear you groan?)

The most exciting development with the Internet has been the voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), better known simply as Internet phones. With this system, you use the Web to make phone calls, using a headset plugged into the computer. I can't go into details here in the column, but go into www.skype.com for the best system yet. If you have Skype in your laptop, or in the computers at home or in the office, you can make Skype to Skype calls for free!

If you are trying to contact someone who still doesn't have Skype installed, GlobeQuest announced last week a web-based phone service, called Innove, which allows calls from the Philippines to Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States at 8.6 cents (US) per minute. That's about P4.50, even cheaper than a local cell call.

There's more, of course, to the Internet than e-mail and VoIP. When overseas, I use the Internet to check the Inquirer and other papers. Here in the Philippines, I use the Internet even more intensively, regularly browsing -- when Yna allows me -- through international newspapers and science journals, in between getting information on Yna's teething, vaccinations, language development.

Should you bring your own computer when you travel? Even a small laptop can be cumbersome, so you might want to just leave it at home. Fortunately, you'll now find Internet cafés everywhere, from Kathmandu to Timbuktu. Some offer VoIP. Ask around. In Indonesia, look for signs that read "Warnet," which means Warung Internet or an Internet Hut (kubo)!

Boon or bane?

There's still so much waiting to be discovered out there. BBC, for example, allows you to download earlier programs of music, literature and poetry readings and debates, which you can then play back on your computer or an MP3 player.

Our need to keep in touch spurred us to make all these technological advances in communications. But we need to pause at times and think about what it means to be wired, to be connected. My experience with American TV helps me to understand how, in the midst of such sophisticated information technology, Americans still end up so misinformed, so totally ignorant of the world.

The other wonders of information technology have their own allure. Easily, with wireless and satellite connections, one can eventually read the Inquirer on a laptop, while sitting in the ruins of the Angkor Wat. Or send text messages endlessly to friends back home that we're in Borobodur. We can, but do we want to?

Lester, an Indian friend, has declared Sundays as no-email day. I'm inclined to extend that into a no-computer, no-cellphone day.