Argentina - calling Argentine Cellphones - a Visitors Manual

I think its a good idea to explain the details of how you are supposed to dial to reach an Argentine Cellphone when you are calling from your home country. Also, its good for visitors to understand how you dial a cellphone once you are in Argentina, and how you can call different area cellphones (cellphones from cities other than Buenos Aires).

First some basic information that you will need to understand how to dial.....

Argentina Country Code: 54
Buenos Aires City Code: 11
Cellphone prefix (when dialing from an Argentine land line): 15
Cellphone prefix (when calling from abroad to an Argentine cellphone): 9 - to be inserted before the city code
International Calling Access: + (in the USA its usually 011)

Argentine cell phones (net of prefixes and area codes) are generally 8 or 7 digits.
Argentina land lines are also mostly 8 or 7 digit numbers, although I think some small towns still have 6 digit numbers.

General dialing rules:

A) calling an Argentine cell phone from outside Argentina

+ 54 9 (city code) (cell phone number)

B) calling an Argentine cell phone from an Argentine land line, when the cell phone is from the same city you are calling from

15 (cell phone number)

C) calling an Argentine cell phone from an Argentine land line, when the cell phone is from a different city than the one you are calling from

0 (city code) 15 (cell phone number)

D) calling a cellphone from another cell phone

- if the cell phone you are calling is from the same area code, just dial the 8 or 7 digit number, no prefixes are required. you may still insert the 15 prefix and it will also work

- if the cell phone you are calling is from a different area code, just dial 0 (area code) (cell phone number)

Please note that if you bring along your home cell phone and plan to roam, its a good idea to verify these rules with your home carrier as its been my experience that some foreign phones may require minor adjustments to these rules.

I've recently had two people give me cell numbers with the prefix 11 instead of 15. I commented that I didn't need the city code, and if what they meant was 15 xxxx xxxx. "No," they said. "The cell number is 11 xxxx xxxx."

With some companies you don't have to use 15+number, just the number. Same thing when you send a text msg.

When my sister who is on the UK O2 network sends me a text to my Movistar mobile I never receive them. I do however receive texts okay from my brother in law who is on the UK Orange network.
I have no idea why this is and my sister hasn't bothered ringing them to find out. She now just sends texts to my UK Asda mobile instead.

Wirelessly posted (Nokia N97 / Palm TX: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.4; Series60/5.0 NokiaN97-3/22.2.110; Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1) AppleWebKit/525 (KHTML, like Gecko) BrowserNG/7.1.4)

With some companies you don't have to use 15+number, just the number. Same thing when you send a text msg.

Yes, but not if you call from a land line... or is your experience different?

Wirelessly posted (Nokia N97 / Palm TX: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.4; Series60/5.0 NokiaN97-3/22.2.110; Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1) AppleWebKit/525 (KHTML, like Gecko) BrowserNG/7.1.4)

When my sister who is on the UK O2 network sends me a text to my Movistar mobile I never receive them. I do however receive texts okay from my brother in law who is on the UK Orange network.
I have no idea why this is and my sister hasn't bothered ringing them to find out. She now just sends texts to my UK Asda mobile instead.

Hiddy... is she inserting the 9 properly...?

Hiddy... is she inserting the 9 properly...?

Yes she's tried every way possible. I suspect she might have to contact her network to get permission or something unblocked. britenbsas had similar problems receiving text messages from the UK. Seems strange how it works with one network and not another.
It's not really important as long as one of them works. I reply using Skype as it's a lot cheaper.

Yes.... some carriers need you to manually activate sending messages to certain locations - Im sure that would fix things.

I've recently had two people give me cell numbers with the prefix 11 instead of 15. I commented that I didn't need the city code, and if what they meant was 15 xxxx xxxx. "No," they said. "The cell number is 11 xxxx xxxx."

Semantics may be at play here... strictly speaking, the above is correct as the pure number is made up of an area code and a number... but one thing is the number and another how you dial it depending on specific situations/circumstances.

But yes, in strict terms the complete number is a 2 or 3 digit area code plus a 7 or 8 digit number - net of any prefixes.

Argentina land lines are also mostly 8 or 7 digit numbers, although I think some small towns still have 6 digit numbers.

Our land line is 2346 (area code for BsAs province I think?) followed by six digits.

Hiddy, you are right... there are also 4 digit area codes. I forgot I have to dial 2293 when I call my mother in law.... :eek: :p

It's important to realize that calls to argentine cell phones from abroad incur costs to the cell phone owner. Those can add up quickly and may not be realized in time by people used to free incoming calls.

Also calls from dial-around services such as onesuite in the US fail to complete, even though the cell phone will ring (at least on Movistar).

John

Good points John..... it depends on the alternate phone service. SkyPe works well with calling Argentine cell phones, and the price is not bad either.... ^

This is a good post because for the uninitiated (and especially if you don't have a hotel operator to tell you what you are doing wrong), you can possibly never figure out how to complete the call.

When my sister who is on the UK O2 network sends me a text to my Movistar mobile I never receive them. I do however receive texts okay from my brother in law who is on the UK Orange network.
I have no idea why this is and my sister hasn't bothered ringing them to find out. She now just sends texts to my UK Asda mobile instead.

It's normal :(, they work with few carriers, same thing here, AT&T works with Claro, Personal and Movistar but not with Nextel


Yes, but not if you call from a land line... or is your experience different?

If you call from a land line, you must use 15


Our land line is 2346 (area code for BsAs province I think?) followed by six digits.


Phone numbers are allways 11 digits numbers for land lines or cellphone lines (+15 prefix)

011+ 8 digits (Ciudad de Buenos Aires)

Area Code (4 to 5 digits) + subscriber Number (7 to 8 digits), usually 02xx-xxx-xxxx/02xxx-xx-xxxx for Telefonica, 03xx-xxx-xxxx/03xxx-xx-xxxx for Telecom


For international calls I use VoipDiscount, load 10 Euros and get 120 free days to land lines (Argentina is included, 300 min. limit in the last 7 days), I can use my Linksys PAP2 adapter at home/work, any gateway numbers from my cell or the iPhone application (when WiFi is available), even my family can call me, they just paid for a local call. If I have to call to a cellphone (0.15 EU) I use the 10 euros credit that I had in my account ;) (you don't loose it).