Panama Internet, TV and Phones

Panama is modern when it comes to these things. Actually they are more advanced than many places in the USA.

Satellite and Cable TV is readily available but you will probably get fewer stations than you had back in the USA. Prices run about $50 a month for basic services including some premium channels. Plan on about 40 or 50 stations. Satellite TV may go out during a storm due to cloud cover. You will get a lot of Spanish stations and some English ones. You can always catch some movies in English with Spanish subtitles. Television with just rabbit ears in Panama City will get you about 15 stations all in Spanish but again you can catch some movies/shows in English with Spanish subtitles. Lot of music videos and of course the US artists sing in Spanish, this they can't dub. To get the news in English you need cable or satellite.

Cell Phones work here as good as in USA. We bought two Samsung cell phones with $50 of air time on each ($100 total airtime) for $125 including the airtime. You do not pay for incoming calls so international calls do not come through on these prepaid cell phones. You can buy airtime cards all over and they seem to have constant specials giving you triple and quadruple minutes for your money thus reducing the cost of the calls drastically. I believe the calling out rate is $0.15 per minute without the discounts, with the discounts it seems to be $0.05 or less. You can also get a regular cell phone with a plan from a cell phone company like Cable & Wireless. You buy the phones, sign a contract and select a plan, rates are not high compared to the USA. Talking on a cell phone while driving is a traffic offense as is not wearing a seat belt while driving.

Land line (home phone) services are similar to the USA. They have call waiting, forwarding etc. We have unlimited calling in Panama City for $35.00 a month. Took us about four days to get installed. Phone worked fine. Seems like circuits to call USA are busy at times.

Internet comes in a few flavors. Dial-up accounts are low price and readily available but I avoid them due to low speed. This brings us to cable internet. For a 1 meg line download speed and a half a me upload speed, it is $69.00 a month with CableOnda. A line with twice that speed is $119 a month. There is a small installation fee and the wait should be 4-10 days depending on your location. There are slower lines at lower prices available. All of Panama city is on a wireless network with 384 speeds up and down for $119 a month. This means you could work from your laptop in the car, don't have that in the USA do you. You can get DSL from Cable & Wireless for slightly higher prices and the fastest line available is about 1 meg.

Internet Cafes are abundant all over Panama City. Most hotels have some form of high speed internet available.

In summation what you have at home is what you can get here for about the same price, or in any event it will be affordable.