After 3 weeks in RP and having my home phone transferred to my cell I received a $345 phone bill!!
Not many personal calls but a few sales calls.
I have ATT and know to turn off roaming and other settings but this one was the highest yet.
Someome told me about Magic Jack, the newer one, no need to connect to your computer. I thought I read there are charges for international calls. The purpose for this is to lessen my phone bill while in RP a few times a year.
I had a Magic Jack ( the earlier one requiring plugged into a computer) and was very happy with it. You select a phone number in whatever area code in the US you want. Calls to anywhere in the US and some other countries are at no additional charge. The magic jack can be used anywhere there is internet service. When you call someone you will be calling from the number you got when you signed up and callers will use that number also. While you do not need a computer you do need wireless internet service. Easy to do, get a local phone from Tel Mex with internet service, about $40 a month. There is another completely wireless way to get internet and GV can fill you in (unless he's in jail again) on that as he got it recently. He buys time as he needs it with no monthly bills. If you are not here a lot that may be a more economical way to go, no regular monthly bill.
Should you go with Magic Jack one issue I had was poor quality reception when I was on the internet and downloading something at the same time as getting or making a call. Solution was to get off the internet before making a call, quality was excellent. BTW you can get two levels of internet bandwidth, I had the smaller and cheaper one and it worked fine.
The new service requires a phone jack to use. The computer based one you pick your own phone # like 623-xxx-xxxx and you call over the internet. People call your MJ phone #. No fees. The only cost is $30.00 or so for the jack and 1 year service, then $19.95 a year after that. I have it in Encanto and it works well unless there is a lot of band witdth traffic.
It plugs in the usb port and away you go. You would need to purchase a phone too.
I have had the same Magic Jack for over 5 years and am very happy with it. I think that they just lowered the price to $69 for 5 years of service. I haven't seen the new one that you guys are talking about but the one that I have works fine. I just leave my computer on and it is just like having a US phone at my house in Mexico. It is also nice that they email voicemails so that I can check them from anywhere with an internet connection.
We use a magic jack phone plugged into the computer at PDO. It usually works just fine but sometimes reception is bad. This last weekend, the internet service was spotty at PDO so we had nothing, no phone, no internet. Jerry pays like 19 bucks a year and as much as we are there, it is well worth it.
I like to compare Magic Jack service to cell phone service. Sometimes it's good, sometimes not. For MJ it depends on how good your internet connection is; for cell phones, it depends on your proximity to cell towers. I have not used the new Magic Jack plus, because we bought 5 years of service a few years ago & it won't transfer. Another option with them is the MJ app for a smart phone, iPod or iPad. You get a US phone # and service is free. It works anywhere you have internet service.
We pay 372 pesos per month for TelMex phone & internet. They even provided a DSL modem / router combo unit.
I found this website great for answering any and all Magic Jack questions. (It's a 3rd party blog.):
Yes, it requires a phone jack for the MJ PLUS. No Internet needed for the MJ PLUS. You can still buy the computer based one.
You still need internet service for the MJ Plus to work. Benefit is it does NOT need to be connected to a computer, just connected directly to your ISP connection.
From the description on the website, you need to be connected to a modem (dsl/etc.) or a router.....wifi won't work since you aren't connected to your computer. I don't know if the Magic Jack Plus is able to be connected to your computer to be "backward compatible".
The only problems I had with the original Magic Jack was when you had the internet signal (wifi) cycling in terms of strength (such as at PDO sometimes)...it appeared that I had 4-5 bars on my wifi signal...but there was a significant lag or echo on the conversation. When the wifi signal was steady, no problems! It was better than using Skype (this is about 2 years ago).
Roberto wrote: There is another completely wireless way to get internet and GV can fill you in (unless he's in jail again) on that as he got it recently. He buys time as he needs it with no monthly bills. If you are not here a lot that may be a more economical way to go, no regular monthly bill. FYI Roberto, they let me out on work release. I lied about my age.
Hi Sunshine. GV Jack here and I don't know Jack about Magic Jack. There was a time my wife used to call me that but...Oh Well.
I am a once in a while visitor to RP and wanted to find a way to get the internet. Telcel sells a product called Telcel Amigo USB Modem. It works like a flash drive, in that you plug it in and it takes off.
It costs around $55.00 and that includes 30 days and 3Gig service. After that you pay as you go. 3Gig runs about 499.00 pesos and is good for a month. You can also buy in lower daily & MB increments.
I usually rent a place in Section 5 in Las Conchas, down the hill on the water. The Telcel tower is not far from there and I get two to three bars there.
The first time I used it was in August and it worked great. A few weeks ago, I was there and it worked but it would lose the signal once in a while. The speed is fairly steady. Not as fast as Cox Cable, but a lot faster than
dial up.
As far as recharging goes, you can go to the Telcel place and have them recharge it or you can do it on line, in Spanish. There is a US company that has a recharging process for Telcell pay as you go phones and is saying they will have the same for data, internet, late this year or early next year. If reasonable I will use them because of the language factor. By the way the folks at Telcel in town were very helpful and the man i worked with spoke very good English.
How you couple that with Magic Jack is beyond me but the rest on here I'm sure can help you.
Good Luck. Feel free to PM me if you need any further info.
WARNING-------If you let the one year subscription expire, you have to buy another one @$39.95. I thought I would just renew one yr. at a
time, but it was after the one yr. anniversary date...If you look in the fine disclaimer print, you will see the disclaimer.
I searched for the Magic Jack app on my iPhon e and couldnt find it. Can you tell us more about it so I can find it?
APPLE app is called "TALK FREE" Works on any APPLE WIFI product
it has some restrictions. FREE only for OUTGOING calls. if you want INCOMING it is 20 per year signing up is easy. you choose a area code plus # etc etc...
For people that already have a MJ account add it to the exsisting account andit is 1/2 price.
I have it installed on my IPOD yes, a IPOD and it works perfectly.
For those that do not have a APPLE product............VONAGE has app.
As far as recharging goes, you can go to the Telcel place and have them recharge it or you can do it on line, in Spanish. There is a US company that has a recharging process for Telcell pay as you go phones and is saying they will have the same for data, internet, late this year or early next year. If reasonable I will use them because of the language factor. By the way the folks at Telcel in town were very helpful and the man i worked with spoke very good English.
GV Jack if you look around in all of the out of the way places on the Telcel website (sitemap, Help, and links on the bottom of the Home Page) you might find the word "Idioma" and if you click on that it will go to a menu that allows you to change the language of the website to "Ingles"...
I haven't looked to see if in fact there is such a link on Telcel's website, but I have found it on Telmex and Prodigy and several other local and Gov. websites here in Mexico... Just a thought...
Somehow I suspect that Idioma is a Spanish word for idiot, refering to me.
GV Jack That's exactly what I was thinking when I stumbled upon that little trick... but I couldn't figure out how a website could call me an idiot when it didn't even know me, or did it..? (was it that obvious)
So I broke out my trusty little "Espangles to Ingles" dictionario and looked the word up.... and discovered that it means "language"...
and Si... it's Mr. Dweller, but my friends call me (well we won't get into what others call me) but you can call me "Sea"...
GV Jack That's exactly what I was thinking when I stumbled upon that little trick... but I couldn't figure out how a website could call me an idiot when it didn't even know me, or did it..? (was it that obvious)
So I broke out my trusty little "Espangles to Ingles" dictionario and looked the word up.... and discovered that it means "language"...
and Si... it's Mr. Dweller, but my friends call me (well we won't get into what others call me) but you can call me "Sea"...
Roberto wrote: There is another completely wireless way to get internet and GV can fill you in (unless he's in jail again) on that as he got it recently. He buys time as he needs it with no monthly bills. If you are not here a lot that may be a more economical way to go, no regular monthly bill. FYI Roberto, they let me out on work release. I lied about my age.
Hi Sunshine. GV Jack here and I don't know Jack about Magic Jack. There was a time my wife used to call me that but...Oh Well.
I am a once in a while visitor to RP and wanted to find a way to get the internet. Telcel sells a product called Telcel Amigo USB Modem. It works like a flash drive, in that you plug it in and it takes off.
It costs around $55.00 and that includes 30 days and 3Gig service. After that you pay as you go. 3Gig runs about 499.00 pesos and is good for a month. You can also buy in lower daily & MB increments.
I usually rent a place in Section 5 in Las Conchas, down the hill on the water. The Telcel tower is not far from there and I get two to three bars there.
The first time I used it was in August and it worked great. A few weeks ago, I was there and it worked but it would lose the signal once in a while. The speed is fairly steady. Not as fast as Cox Cable, but a lot faster than
dial up.
As far as recharging goes, you can go to the Telcel place and have them recharge it or you can do it on line, in Spanish. There is a US company that has a recharging process for Telcell pay as you go phones and is saying they will have the same for data, internet, late this year or early next year. If reasonable I will use them because of the language factor. By the way the folks at Telcel in town were very helpful and the man i worked with spoke very good English.
How you couple that with Magic Jack is beyond me but the rest on here I'm sure can help you.
Good Luck. Feel free to PM me if you need any further info.
I use the same card and its great for people that go to RP once a month or so...there are somethings to rememember when using the Telcel modem:
1. You recharge the card online or with a prepaid card...just like a Telcel phone.
2. You buy days/MB's it expires which ever is first.
3. Keep in mind, once the MB's expire it goes to la carte data and will eat up all your remaining prepaid credits. Its best to only buy and activite what you are going to use right away.
4. The Sim card in the USB modem needs to be recharged and used every 6 months to remain active.
On a 18 month contract at just under 40 bucks per month the Telecell modem gets you 5 gigs of data...that lasts a long time....
Dezracer said:
I use the same card and its great for people that go to RP once a month or so...there are somethings to rememember when using the Telcel modem:
1. You recharge the card online or with a prepaid card...just like a Telcel phone.
2. You buy days/MB's it expires which ever is first.
3. Keep in mind, once the MB's expire it goes to la carte data and will eat up all your remaining prepaid credits. Its best to only buy and activite what you are going to use right away.
4. The Sim card in the USB modem needs to be recharged and used every 6 months to remain active.
I just wanted to chime in I purchased a Magic Jack last week and took it down to Penasco. Set it up on a small notebook computer logged into the Sonoran Sea WIFI and the phone worked great I made calls and accepted calls all off of my new 602 area code. This will make it alot cheaper than using the cell phones down in Rocky Point.
I did purchase the Magic Jack Plus. It said you could use your own telephone number. I started to install it and got to the phone # but could not use my number. I need this number, I use it for business and have had it for over 16 years. I stopped the installation (ooops!) and still do not know what to do.
AZ ROB - did you find this to be true with your installation. It is too late to return it so I will be out $85.
When you port your number to Magic Jack it ports it from your existing phone service to Magic Jack. This is not a good option if you want to keep your land line. We did port our number because we wanted to drop our $40 per month landline but not lose our # that we've had for 20 years. It was a good option for us, but may not be for everyone.
BTW, we had Magic Jack for several years before we ported our phone #, so we were already familiar with its limitations.
Sunshine I didn't want to change any numbers all I did was find a new number and it is close enough to my current number that it is easy to remember.
Roberto that is what I did just forwarded my office number to my cell phone then forward the cell phone to the magic jack. I did find out that if I have the magic jack pluged into the computer and functioning I can use the computer mic and speaker to act as a phone.
Finally, Magic Jack up and running. I did get a new number as suggested here now I need to get a phone to have in RP.
Thanks to all for your suggestions. You guys are just great when someone is in need of help.
After you get a number from magic jack you can port your old number on this page, don't shut down your old home number.
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If you use google for email, on your folders you have one named chat, you have to register and they give you a google phone account to make outgoing calls from your computer, its free.