How We Spent Our Family Vacation is a new column that unpacks a single trip down to the cost, from the point of view of families who love to travel.
05.02.2025 - 20:45 / lonelyplanet.com
Feb 5, 2025 • 8 min read
The world’s most narrow and southern country packs a lot of everything into its slender form: Beautiful beaches, remote islands, towering mountains, colossal glaciers and fjords, fiery volcanoes, fertile valleys and lunar-like desertscapes – sometimes less than 150km (93.2 miles) apart from one another! A land of extremes if there ever was one, Chile runs the gamut of outdoor diversions. It’s not uncommon to ski pillowy powder in the morning and soak in the sun at the sea by the afternoon.
With the country’s diverse landscapes comes telecom challenges, though perhaps not as many as expected. While swaths of the Andes, Atacama and Patagonia can be dark, Chile is South America’s most well-connected country, with most regions boasting excellent mobile internet connectivity. Here’s a rundown on getting – and staying – connected with wi-fi, eSIMs and more while traversing Chile’s rapidly shifting panoramas.
¡Si! Chile operates on the GSM network, so all GSM-capable mobile devices will work in the country. But roaming internationally on our home country plans is shockingly expensive, especially considering how much data we now use daily while traveling (navigation, searching for hotels and restaurants, streaming, keeping in touch with loved ones back home etc). AT&T, for example, charges customers US$12 (CH$ 11,846) per day for unlimited high-speed data, talk, and text across more than 210 countries. Roaming from our home plans can certainly be convenient, but there’s questionable value considering the ease in which we can now obtain a local SIM (provided your phone is unlocked) and/or install an eSIM (on phones with eSIM capability).
Entel, Movistar, Claro, and Wom are Chile’s main cellular service providers, which operate across a well-developed 3G, 4G LTE and 5G cellular network. Most of the country runs on 4G/4G LTE, with 5G limited to larger metropolitan areas and surrounds (Wom is currently the best for 5G coverage). Patagonia (between Puerto Montt and Punta Arenas) and the Atacama Desert (between Copiapó and Antofagasta) are the largest patches of spotty coverage throughout Chile, with miles and miles of dead zone throughout both.
To get connected with a pre-paid SIM/eSIM plan, expect to pay between US$2 (CH$2000) and US$5 (CH$5000), depending on the carrier/plan. Entel offers a 1GB, 15-day plan that includes 25 minutes for US$2 (CH$2000), Wom offers a similarly-priced plan with 50 calling minutes. With Claro, a similar plan is US$4 (CH$4000). Movistar offers the most substantial plan: 40GB plus 200 minutes for 30 days for US$5.05 (CH$4990). Of course, 1GB across 15 days isn’t going to get you very far if you're navigating with Google Maps and/or Waze throughout the day and
How We Spent Our Family Vacation is a new column that unpacks a single trip down to the cost, from the point of view of families who love to travel.
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