Telephone

In Ecuador, like in most of other Latin American countries, one of the p

opular businesses is selling calling minutes. The idea is very simple. Ordinary user gets a cheap monthly subscription plan for his/her mobile phone, but any calls made are very expensive. For this reason, other people purchase expensive subscriptions and are able to offer calling minutes much cheaper. In Venezuela and Colombia lots of such people sell minutes on the street by holding couple of mobile phones in the hands (each for different operators) and shouting “llamadas! llamadas!” (“calls! calls!”). Others set up more advanced business – a call-shop with several telephone booths and call them “CABINAS” (cabins).

Two days ago in the old town of Quito it was hard to hide laugh when seeing this woman… If it would have been in Cuba, we would have reacted differently…

This old lady, most probably, makes this business for the last 20 years and since then she have never changed neither the table, nor the telehone, or the “Telefono” label. Another interesting thing was that until now we have never seen people selling calling minutes on the street, like it was in Venezuela and Colombia…

This woman was more a guest from the past than the reality.