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COMMUNICATIONS |
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Letters from the Philippines take at least five days to reach other
countries by air, sometimes significantly longer. For incoming mail,
major post offices in Manila have a counter for poste restante .
The country's telephone system has improved dramatically in recent years,
although outside urban centres it can still be temperamental. Public
payphones are not common, but can be found in many malls (where there
are often long queues to use them) and hotel lobbies. They take P1 and
P5 coins. Many payphones take only Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT)
cards only, known as Fonkards . These are available in P100, P200, P300
and P500 denominations and can be bought from convenience stores such as
7-11 and hotels. Long-distance domestic calls are known as NDD (National
Direct Dialling). Regional codes are given throughout the section;
you'll need to dial the "0" before all long-distance national calls
within the Philippines. To check a phone code, dial 112. Manila to
Baguio costs P5 a minute, or P4 during the off-peak hours of 7pm-7am and
all day Sunday. For local directory assistance call 114.
Rates for international IDD calls are fixed and charged in US dollars by
the "pulse". A pulse is equivalent to six seconds. To Australia the
first ten pulses (60 seconds) cost 19 cents and every additional pulse
cost 15 cents. For the UK it's 19 cents then 16 cents. Calls are cheaper
9pm-8am and all day Sunday. To call abroad from the Philippines, dial 00
+ IDD country code + area code (minus the first 0) + number. The
international operator is tel 108. PLDT also has a service for making
overseas collect calls . If you dial 105 plus the country access code
you will be connected to the operator of the country you are calling.
These calls can be billed to your credit card.
Internet cafés are springing up all over Manila and an increasing number
of the more popular resorts and dive centres have email facilities you
might be able to use for a small charge.
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