Phone Home E.T. – Staying Connected in Rocky Point, Mexico

Phone Home E.T. – Staying Connected in Rocky Point, Mexico

If you spend any amount of time here in Rocky Point, Mexico and want to stay in touch with your family how do you do it? If you own a condo or a home you probably have a land line, but if you are a frequent visitor chances are you do not have a way to keep in touch. But you actually do.

More and more visitors are buying “Amigo Kits” from Telcel, our local cellular carrier. An Amigo Kit contains a basic phone and usually some starter minutes all for around $30 USD. Sometimes they run specials where you can get the phone and minutes and come out ahead – meaning they give you more minutes than you paid for the entire package.

You don’t have to purchase the Amigo Kit, Telcel offers many other phones and phone plans though to get a plan you will need documentation such as a telephone or electric bill or your resident status card. With the Amigo Kit you can recharge your phone with phone cards in various denominations, just as you do in the U.S. You receive a phone number that your family can call and you can use your minutes to phone home or locally. Granted, this is not the cheapest way to go, but it won’t break the bank either and it’s a good way to keep in touch while you’re on vacation.

If you come down quite often you might consider the “Viva Mexico” plan from AT&T which allows your phone to work in the U.S. and in Mexico. For about $60 USD a month your phone will work in Rocky Point, Mexico. You can phone home and people can call you as they normally do. You can also add extra lines to this plan for an additional charge as well as data and texting.

Be aware that if you use your data while you are here in Mexico you will be charged roaming charges. Curious as to the data roaming charges we decided to test it one day – using data as we normally do – by this I mean just downloading email, using Facebook and other apps, but not downloading videos, surfing the net or watching videos on YouTube and it came out to $10 USD for one day! So, turn off your data roaming while you are in Rocky Point unless your emails are urgent and you can’t download them using a wireless connection.

Be aware of the text messages as well. When you are in Mexico an outgoing text will cost you .50-cents. We thought because we had unlimited texting that they were free in the U.S. and Mexico – not so. Even taking those two factors into consideration, it’s still a great plan at a great price if you vacation in Rocky Point often and want to stay in touch. I believe Verizon may work here sometimes, but consistently, AT&T has been the only one to work almost 100% of the time.

Telcel Amigo Kit Promotion