Bogotá's Minute Men (and Women)

By Jorge Tadeo University.

Foreign visitors wonder what they are: these people standing on plazas, parks and streetcorners throughout Bogotá wearing or carrying signs saying 'Minutos.'

On Plaza San Victorino.  

Will they add minutes to your life? Save you time by doing your chores? Sell you a few minutes of their time and company?

No, they'll hand you a telephone chained to their waist and charge you the minute printed on those signs they're holding up. These people are living, walking telephone booths.

The ubiquitous minuteros result from the expensiveness of Colombia's cellphone industry. Relatively speaking, it can be quite expensive to make calls from your phone, particularly when calling between telephones belonging to different companies. The minuteros buy time in bulk and have phones from all of the companies. The real disadvantage is for the call's recipient, who doesn't know who's calling before answering. But when you want to call up that estranged special somebody who'd never answer if they you it was you, then minuteros come in handy.

The cell phone companies don't appreciate the minuteros employing their services more economically. And authorities have in the past talked of prohibiting the business (probably under pressure from the companies.) But don't feel sorry for Colombia's cell phone companies - Comcell, Movistar and Tigo - whose pricing schemes can resemble institutionalized theft - at least to me: they charge for calls by the minute. What if your call lasted only two seconds? They'll charge you for the full minute, anyway. How about if you signed up for one of their plans providing 150 minutes of talk time per month, but you left for vacation, got laryngitis or your phone got stolen, and used only a few of those minutes? Don't worry, the cell phone company will take all your time away, anyway. (At least that's all true of Comcel, whom I patronize guiltily, since they hold a near monopoly.)

On Carrera 5 in La Candelaria. 

As for the minuteros, their income varies widely depending on location: one man in the very busy Plaza San Victorino said he can earn 50,000 to 60,000 pesos per day - far above the minimum wage. But others earn much less.

In a nation with high unemployment and a big informal economy, the minute-selling business provides a way to survive for countless people who lack skills or opportunities. But you'll also make a sad observation on the limited opportunities in Colombia's economy by talking to some of the very capable people spend their days standing around with a couple of cell phones chained to their waists and yelling 'minutos!' 'minutos!'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Fighting for the Right to Sell Cellphones

No to monopoly!

Cell phone merchants marched thru downtown Bogotá today protesting a new decree tightening controls on celular telephone sales.

Stolen or just pre-owned? Phones and parts for sale on a
Bogotá sidewalk. One of these guys ran after me, angry
about the photo. I guess he had something to be worried about. 

According to the government, the decree will make stolen cellular phones useless and thus less appealing to thieves. Cell phone theft is a big problem - reportedly, 1.5 million cellphones are stolen every year in Colombia. And the thefts sometimes even turn deadly - recently the chaplain of a Catholic university was murdered by thieves who stole his phone. That crime probably provided the impulse for this decree's issuance.

An acquaintance who sells new and used cellphones guesstimates that half the used phones he buys are stolen. But it sure would be a pity if used cellphones could not be resold and had to be trashed, with all of the environmental and economic impacts of that. Under the new decree, cellphones reported stolen must be turned off permanently, making them useless.

A Blackberry for 230,000 pesos - negotiable! And it appeared to work. 

However, owners of small cell phone stores suspect that the law's goal is to give the cell phone operators - Comcel, Movistar and Tigo - a monopoly on phone sales.

I've heard a saying in Latin America: 'Hecha la ley, hecha la trampa' - 'For every lie, there's a trick.' It's hard to imagine that someone won't find a way to rejig stolen cell phones for reuse, if only in a different country.

Is this another example of legal magical realism? A bill now in Congress would create a punishment of 6 to 8 year in prison for reprogramming stolen cellphones. One has to ask whether such a draconian punishment will be enforced at all. That's a much harsher punishment than that for drunken driving! (Here's a news piece about a drunk driver who killed someone and got sentenced to only a little more than four years in prison.)

Window shopping for phones in a San Andresito. 

Call for 200 pesos per minute. Seems as tho almost everybody has a cellphone - but many people  use them only to receive calls, and save money by calling from rented public phones, which are much cheaper.  

Police following the march. 

In the afternoon, these women police were still lined up near the closed San Andresitos, as tho violence might break out at any minute. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours