Right now there are basically three phone companies in Panama that provide service for land lines and wireless.
ClaroCom is the newest service in Panama http://www.clarocom.com/ , so I’ll be giving a lot of information on this prepaid service. You purchase the minutes for use at a local merchant, you receive an eight digit pin number for activation. With this service you can call Canada, US, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. You can use the minutes for public phones, cell phones, and regular house phone service. The current information pamphlet says you can call within Panama to Panama City, Colόn, Dávid, Aguadulce, and La Chorrera for 4 cents a minute. To the rest of Panama, US Colombia, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Spain, Italy, Canada, England, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Romania, and Israel at 5 cents a minute. They list Switzerland, Denmark, Australia, Costa Rica, Venezuela, France, Brazil, Perú, Chilé, parts of the Dominican Republic, Japan, Russia, and Mexico at 7 cents a minute and the rest of the world for 15 cents a minute. ClaroCom owns TeleCarrier who offers service for the house. The problem with TeleCarrier is Cable & Wireless has been able to severely limit the area in Panama where it can be offered. The rumor is next year this is going to change and TeleCarrier will be more widely available.

Both of the other two companies in Panama offers prepaid cards or contract service.

Cable & Wireless (C&W) offers land lines, contract cell phone service and prepaid cell phone service in Panama. http://www.cwmovil.com/movil/index.asp . Calling back to the US from Panama costs about 10 cents a minute. Movistar offers contract cell phone service and prepaid cell phone service. Movistar also has a plan for calling between cell phone that have their service similar to what you would be use to in the US http://www.movistar.com.pa/index.php Both companies have a similar national coverage plans, but the areas they coverage are not identical. Both are constantly expanding their network service with new towers around the country. C&W and Movistar rates are very competitive.

Upon arrival many people visiting Panama will purchase a prepaid cell phone for around $30 (sometimes less with specials) and charge the phone with a $5 or $10 card. This allows the receipt of unlimited incoming call for thirty days once the phone is activated even if out going minutes become used up. There are frequent specials on the calling cards offering double and triple the face value ($5 is worth either $10 or $15). If you purchase one of these cards and you do not let the minutes totally expire but add additional minute from a card at regular value those minutes will continue to be added at the double or triple value. You will easily be able to tell when these specials are available, street merchants walk the lanes of traffic selling prepaid minutes and hold signs that advertise the double or triple value. With triple minutes it works out to be about the same price as if you were on a contract but a bit of a pain remembering to keep track of you minutes and having to buy a card. If you're moving to Panama and you own a cell phone with a GSM chip you can buy a new chip for local service and replace the current one.


If you are not fluent in Spanish, it would be wise to have the counter person you purchase the phone through change the language (idiom) in your cell phone to English it will make working with your phone a lot easier.
You should expect daily service problems with you cell and some times your land phones. Both C & W and Moviestar will have dropped calls, network jams, and failed dialing. When we moved here a year ago it wasn’t as frequent as it is now. Maybe this is because of the large influx of people moving to and visiting Panama to the extent the service providers can’t keep up with the demand, in any event it can be frustrating. Consequently, we know of a couple of people in Panama who carry a contract cell from one company and a prepaid from the other so they are never out of a coverage area and also have a network option. But it is also important to note Panama has a mountain range, if you are traveling in a mountainous area you will have places you can’t get coverage from either service.

VOIP is a workable alternative here. ClaroCom has a new VOIP service called Claro Lite http://www.clarocom.com/clarolite/habla.aspx It offers local numbers in Panama, Aregentina, Brasil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru. It is also advertising the addition of many more countries in the not too distant future.