If you live in the Philippines and you're heading overseas, you've probably already thought about how you're going to stay connected.
Maybe you're a Filipino heading to Japan for a holiday, visiting family in the United States, or finally taking that dream trip around Europe.
Or perhaps you're one of the many British, Australian, American, Korean, Canadian or European expats living in the Philippines and you're heading home for a few weeks to visit family.
Either way, these days getting internet overseas is pretty easy.
You can turn on international roaming with Globe or Smart. Or, if you're a little more travel-savvy, you can buy an inexpensive travel eSIM before you leave and have data waiting for you as soon as the plane lands.
Google Maps works. Messenger works. Viber and WhatsApp work. You can check your email, order a Grab or Uber, post your holiday photos and find your hotel.
You're all set.
Well... almost.
There's one surprisingly simple question that many travelers don't think about until they're already overseas:
How are you going to make an actual telephone call?
Not a Messenger call. Not Viber. Not WhatsApp.
We're talking about calling a real mobile or landline number. And when you're traveling, that comes up a lot more often than you might think.
Traveler #1: "I'll Just Use My Philippine SIM"
This is certainly the easiest option.
You land overseas, your Globe or Smart SIM connects to a local partner network, roaming kicks in and your phone works pretty much the way it does at home.
Need to call the hotel? You call.
Need to change a restaurant reservation? You call.
Your taxi driver gives you his mobile number? You call him.
Your flight gets changed and you need to talk to the airline? You call.
The problem isn't that roaming doesn't work.
The problem is what those calls can cost.
This is particularly easy to overlook if you're a postpaid customer. There's no cash register ringing every time you make a call. The phone simply works, and you may not give the price much thought until you see the bill.
Globe's published standard Postpaid roaming rates currently divide destinations into different zones. Standard outgoing calls can cost ₱120 per minute in Asia-Pacific and the Americas and ₱150 per minute in Europe and Africa when you're using standard roaming rather than an applicable call package or promotion.
And here's the important part:
We're not necessarily talking about making a long international call back to the Philippines.
You could be standing in France and calling a restaurant five kilometers away.
It's still your Philippine SIM roaming on a foreign network. At ₱150 per minute, a few completely ordinary telephone calls can add up very quickly.
Five minutes sorting out a problem with an airline: ₱750.
Three minutes calling your hotel: ₱450.
Ten minutes dealing with a car rental company: ₱1,500.
That's ₱2,700 for just 18 minutes of telephone calls.
Of course, Globe and Smart offer various roaming packages and promotions, and those can reduce costs considerably. It's always worth checking your carrier's current roaming offers before traveling.
The point is simply this:
Don't assume that because your phone can make the call, the call is cheap.
Traveler #2: "I'm Smarter Than That. I Bought an eSIM."
Good move.
In fact, for many travelers, an eSIM is a terrific way to get affordable mobile data overseas.
You can buy one before leaving the Philippines, install it on your phone and have internet access shortly after you land.
No hunting around an airport for a SIM-card kiosk.
No swapping tiny pieces of plastic in and out of your phone.
And, most importantly, no accidentally using enormous amounts of expensive Philippine data roaming.
There's just one little catch.
Many of the inexpensive travel eSIMs people buy are data-only.
They give you internet. They don't necessarily give you a normal local telephone number or the ability to make ordinary voice calls to mobile phones and landlines.
Most of the time, you won't care.
Until suddenly you do.
"Wait... How Do I Call This Guy?"
Imagine you're in Italy. Your taxi driver drops you at your hotel and says:
"If you want to visit the winery tomorrow, here's my number. Give me a call."
Great. Except... call him with what?
Or perhaps you've found a fantastic little restaurant, but reservations are by telephone.
Your hotel wants you to call if you're arriving after 10 PM.
Your airport transfer hasn't shown up.
The airline has changed your flight.
Your Airbnb host has given you a mobile number.
You need to call a local clinic or pharmacy.
You need to call your bank back home.
Or maybe you're simply trying to call a family member who doesn't use the same messaging app you do.
WhatsApp, Messenger and Viber are fantastic when the person or business you're trying to reach uses them. But ordinary telephone numbers aren't going anywhere.
Hotels have them.
Restaurants have them.
Airlines have them.
Banks have them.
Taxi drivers have them.
Government offices have them.
Your travel eSIM may have solved your internet problem beautifully while leaving you with no simple way to call any of them.
And This Isn't Just a Problem for Filipino Travelers
There's another group of travelers we know very well here in the Philippines: expats.
Hundreds of thousands of foreigners live in the Philippines, including large British, Australian, American, Korean, Canadian and European communities.
Many travel back to their home countries every year. They also travel to other countries on holiday.
Suppose you're British and you've been living in the Philippines for several years. You're flying home to the UK for three weeks to see family.
You may no longer maintain a UK mobile account. Perhaps you buy an eSIM for the trip because all you really need most of the time is data.
Then you get to London and need to call a hotel.
Or a restaurant. Or the railway. Or your bank. Or an old friend whose number is sitting in your contacts but who isn't on WhatsApp.
Maybe you stop in Singapore for a couple of days on the way. Now you need to call a Singapore number.
Then you arrive in the UK and need to call British numbers. A week later you take a side trip to France and need to call a French number.
You shouldn't need three different SIM cards just to make a few telephone calls.
And you don't.
The Simple Solution: Let Your eSIM Handle the Data
This is where the solution becomes surprisingly simple.
Keep the eSIM.
Let it do what it's good at.
Use it for Google Maps, email, Facebook, Messenger, Viber, WhatsApp, browsing and everything else that needs internet access.
Then use an internet calling service when you need to reach an actual telephone number.
The call travels over the internet connection you already have instead of relying on your Philippine SIM's international voice roaming.
And that internet connection doesn't necessarily have to come from an eSIM.
It can be your hotel's Wi-Fi.
Airport Wi-Fi.
A local SIM.
A friend's hotspot.
Your home internet while you're back in the Philippines.
As long as you've got a decent internet connection, you've got a way to make the call.
And that's exactly where CPI Call Shop comes in.
Your eSIM Gives You the Internet. CPI Gives You a Telephone.
We've been helping people make inexpensive international calls from Angeles City, Philippines for more than 23 years.
Over those years we've served Filipinos calling overseas, expats calling home, tourists passing through the Philippines and businesses that simply need an affordable way to reach telephone numbers around the world.
Now we've taken that experience and built a completely new CPI Call Shop calling system and mobile app.
The idea behind it is very simple:
Open the CPI Call Shop app and call a real telephone number.
The person you're calling doesn't need the CPI Call Shop app.
They don't need to download anything.
They don't need WhatsApp, Messenger or Viber.
You're calling their regular mobile phone or landline.
So if you're sitting in a hotel in Paris and need to call a restaurant, call it.
Need to ring your hotel in Tokyo? Call it.
An Australian expat traveling through Thailand needs to call his bank back in Australia? Open the CPI app and call it.
A British expat from Angeles is visiting family in England and needs to call a UK landline? Call it with the CPI app.
An American traveling around Europe needs to call his credit-card company in the United States? Call it.
One CPI Call Shop account. One app. One prepaid balance.
And Here's Where the Numbers Get Interesting
Let's go back to our traveler in Europe.
Globe's published standard Postpaid roaming rate for outgoing calls in Europe can be ₱150 per minute without an applicable roaming call package.
Many destinations on CPI's World Call plan can be called for as little as ₱2.50 per minute, with rates as low as ₱2.00 per minute on our higher-value plans.
Rates vary by destination, of course, so you should always check the current CPI rate for the country you're calling.
But consider this example.
A 10-minute call at ₱150 per minute:
₱1,500.
A 10-minute call at ₱2.50 per minute:
₱25.
That's quite a difference for making exactly the same 10-minute telephone call.
Start With ₱200 and Keep It on Your Phone
Here's another reason we think CPI Call Shop works particularly well for travelers.
You don't have to buy some enormous international calling package.
CPI Call Shop's World Call plan is prepaid.
You can start with as little as ₱200.
At a destination costing ₱2.50 per minute, that's enough for up to 80 minutes of calls.
Maybe you won't use anywhere near that much. That's fine.
Because your CPI prepaid load doesn't expire.
Take your trip to Japan and use ₱30. Come home to the Philippines.
Six months later you're going to Australia? Your remaining credit is still sitting there.
Next year you're going to Europe? It's still there.
That's why we like the idea of setting up CPI Call Shop before you travel.
Put a little credit on the account and leave the app on your phone.
You may hardly use it.
Until the moment you really need it.
Run Low While You're Traveling? Reload From Anywhere.
And if you do use up your credit, you don't need to contact CPI or wait until you get back to the Philippines.
You can reload your account yourself from anywhere.
Just log into your CPI customer portal with your email, click Top Up, choose the amount you want and pay.
You can use GCash, which is especially convenient for customers from the Philippines, as well as major credit and debit cards and other available payment methods.
Your account is automatically reloaded and you're ready to continue calling.
You could be sitting in a hotel room in London, waiting for a flight in Singapore or having a coffee in Sydney.
Log in. Top up. Keep calling.
No trip to CPI Call Shop in Angeles City. No waiting for somebody to manually add credit.
And because your prepaid load doesn't expire, there's no reason to put a huge amount on the account before you travel.
Start small. If you need more, add it.
The Perfect Travel Combination
We aren't trying to replace travel eSIMs.
Quite the opposite.
We think an inexpensive travel eSIM and CPI Call Shop are a terrific combination.
Your eSIM handles the internet. CPI handles the phone calls.
Use your eSIM for Google Maps, browsing, email, Facebook, Messenger, Viber, WhatsApp and everything else you normally do online.
Then, when somebody gives you an actual mobile or landline number and says, "Give me a call," open the CPI app on your smartphone and call them.
That's it.
No hunting around for another local SIM.
No wondering whether the restaurant has WhatsApp.
No maintaining a UK, Australian or US mobile account just because you visit home occasionally.
And no casually making a roaming call without realizing it might be costing you ₱120 or ₱150 every minute.
Set It Up Before You Leave
That's probably the most useful advice in this entire article.
Don't wait until you're standing outside a hotel at 11 PM trying to figure out how you're going to call the telephone number taped to the front door.
Set up CPI Call Shop on your smartphone before your trip.
Download the app. Create your account. Put ₱200, or whatever amount you're comfortable with, on it.
Then forget about it.
Use your eSIM. Use Wi-Fi. Use Messenger and WhatsApp. Enjoy your trip.
But when your taxi driver hands you his number...
When the restaurant says "Call us for a reservation..."
When the airline puts you on hold...
When your hotel asks you to ring the front desk...
Or when you're halfway around the world and simply need to call a regular telephone number back home...you're ready.
For more than 23 years, that's what CPI Call Shop has been about: making it easier and cheaper to pick up a phone and call somebody, wherever they happen to be.
The technology has changed quite a bit since we opened our doors in Angeles City back in 2003.
The idea really hasn't.
Call anywhere for cheap.
Traveling soon?
Set up CPI Call Shop by purchasing one of our World Call international calling plans before you leave the Philippines.
Your prepaid load never expires, and if you need more while you're away, you can reload online from anywhere in minutes.
Your eSIM gives you the internet. CPI gives you a telephone.
Traveling soon? Get CPI Call Shop set up before you fly.
Choose a World Call plan, download the app, and have a cheap way to call real mobile and landline numbers wherever your travels take you.
👉 CLICK HERE TO GET CPI CALL SHOP'S WORLD CALL — CALL ANYWHERE FOR CHEAP