[originally posted by....]
Victor
Junior Member posted 07-25-2000 11:28 PM
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Can anyone direct me to a company that rents cell phones by the week or month in Madrid, either at the airport or in the city? I am looking to rent a cell phone for three weeks to one month.
Victor

Seems to be a popular topic!
Saludos, MadridMan

Hi MadridMan,
In my company they use Roberts or AllCell. But to rent a phone and to pay for the services could cost about 200 - 300$ a month. You can rent the phone in the States and bring it to Spain. This 2 companies have a webpage but I am afraid that I cannot remember the address.

Spain seems to have something the U.S. doesnt have yet. My friends say they BUY their cell phones in any old place, and they come with a phone card worth about as much as you paid for the phone (like 5 thousand p's, = about $35). Then you buy new phone cards to 'recharge.' Does this make sense? Seems to me it would be the way to go. But I don't know if you can receive international calls on these... why not? ANyone know what I am talking about?
rgf

Hi rgf,
What you are saying makes sense,but those phones are only good in Spain. If you want to make international calls you have to buy the "good ones", that means the "expensive ones". I still think that Telefonica calling cards are the best solution. You can find public phones everywhere in Spain, even the smallest village has 2 or 3, the calling cards are not very expensive and if you call on weekends it is cheaper. You only have to go to the "Estanco" (the place where they sell stamps, cigarrets...) and buy the calling card. You can buy one that cost 2000 pesetas and talk with your family/friends for at least 45 minutes. I know what I am talking about, that is what I did when I was in Spain and my husband (boyfriend by that time) was in USA.

You can definitely receive international calls with the cell phones rgf mentioned. I am calling my boyfriend daily from the US on his cell phone which is exactly of such a type.
If I were you, I would buy in Spain one of the cheap cell phone packages- cell phone + prepaid calling card for 10.000 ptas in total (ca. 55 $). Even though you cannot use such a phone in the US afterwards, I still would guess that it is the cheapest solution. You can find offers where the phone comes with a prepaid calling card carrying exactly that value, and the idea of renting one can hardly be cheaper. I cannot guarantee that they have these offers right now since I am not in Spain at the moment, but I still saw them a couple of months ago.
They sell them in many places in the entire city, for example at the Internet Place at the Puerta del Sol (the Internet place is in the basement and on the street level they sell cell phones- you can easily find it walking around at Puerta del Sol. But as I said, there are plenty of other places, I am not aware of one at the airport, though. They do sell prepaid cards for cell phones at the airport, but I have not seen them selling phones proper.)
As long as you keep a positive balance on the card, the card remains valid for 9 months (these are the conditions of Movistar, I do not know about Airtel and Amena, but I think they are similar), and after that, they keep you the number for 3 months and you can still recharge it. This way, you can use the phone whenever you go to Spain. Movistar prepaid cards even have roaming in many other states, but of course, it gets expensive once you make or receive calls out of Spain.
The big advantage of cell phone contracts in Europe is that unlike US companies, they do not charge you as a cell phone user for incoming calls, the person who calls you pays the extra charges for air time (which makes calls TO cell phones rather expensive). As long as you remain in the country in which you have a contract, you just pay if you yourself call other people.
Therefore, if you basically use a cell phone to receive calls, these packages (cell phone + prepaid card) are a great bargain- for 10.000 ptas, you can receive an unlimited number of calls in Spain for a year, with the possibility to extend the validity of your card for another nine months whenever you recharge it.
And to make calls, you could mainly use public phones, as Nuria suggests, since international calls from your cell phone using prepaid cell phone cards are pretty expensive. Or you could go to a calling place where they offer slightly cheaper rates than from public phones (or at least that is what they advertise), for example the internet place at the Puerta del Sol I mentioned before.

GREAT advice on the cell phone! Plus, those movistar phones have a keypad to send messages to other users, which are FREE as I understand it! If you are going to Spain on business and getting business calls (who can pay for the more pricey charges), these cheap phones are really the way to go. I was amazed how CHEAP they are (the cost of the phone is credited in the phone card, basically).

Hi rgf,

Unless Movistar has a special summer offer, sending short messages to cell phones is NOT free. They charge you about 25 pesetas per messages.

However you can send them for free from Movistar website. Therefore, your friends and/or family can send you messages (up to 160 characters) to your phone.

Also note that calls from cell phones are still quite expensive in Spain (though almost everybody in Spain use them!).

Regards,

Antonio

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The best tips from your favourite hostal in Madrid.
Hostal Chelo at http://www.chelo.com

One more note so we can exhaust the cell phone topic-

Let's say you have a Telefónica calling card to use on pay phones-
If you happen to be using it within Spain to call others on their cell phones, the time runs out really fast, since it's MUCH more expensive to call a cell phone than to call a regular phone. I guess the calling cards are handy, but they run out really fast. Still, it's more convenient that plugging the phone w/ coins.

I studied in Madrid for 6 weeks this summer and bought a movil the day I got there, 5000 ptas for the phone and 5000 more in prepaid airtime. It was very convenient for me to receive calls from home, since it was free for me, I did not have to worry about receiving calls from the US at odd hours because of the time difference, and it didn't matter what part of Spain I was in (I traveled throughout the country on the weekends). However, it is very expensive to make calls, especially to the US, and my prepaid limit ran out very quickly. I ended up buying a recarga card for 5000 ptas about once a week because I made a lot of calls. My service was through Airtel, and they have a plan called "tiempo libre" that makes it a lot cheaper to make calls after 4pm, ask the salesperson to change the plan for you when you buy the phone. I would usually call the US on my cell and ask them to call me back, that way it was free for me to receive the call. Otherwise, for outgoing international calls, I would recommend the prepaid cards at the internet stores in Sol, you get much more time for the money than on the Telefonica cards.

Thanks for a great site, I have only been back in the states for a month and I am already trying to find a way to go back ASAP!