So since January 3rd Cable & Wireless's voice telecoms monopoly has been broken in Panama. This counts for local calls, National Long Distance and International Long Distance.
We now have several competitors and the papers have been filled with the first battles of the Telecoms wars here.
The largest battle has been for long distance calls on your mobile. The two main cellular phone companies Cable and Wireless and Bell South Cellular. Bell South started on the 2nd of January with fullpage ads offering $0.05 a minute calls to the US from their mobiles. The next day C&W came back with a $0.04 a minute rate.
Most Panamanians couldnt believe their eyes when they saw these rates. Of course they are pretty much standard world wide.
One thing though that isn't quite so obvious is that the price doesnt include the $1 per call government tax on international calls and worse the cellular air time.
I'm on pre paid like most people here this means there is an additional $0.20-$.40 per minute on top of this. So all of a sudden it isn't that good. I have to say though that it's still better than many prepaid international calls from the UK.
This and cdma is definitely incentive for me to open a real post pay account.