In Chile, telephone number formats and call costs vary depending on the type (landline or mobile) and location (Metropolitan region or other regions).
In the metropolitan area, landline phone numbers
- have a single-digit area code (2)
- and a 7-digit number
Outside of the metropolitan area, they
- have a 2-digit area code
- and a 6-digit number
Mobile numbers
- have 8 digits and begin only with the digits 6, 7, 8, 9
- belong to one national area code (9)
How you dial these numbers, of course, depends on where you are.
Within the same area code (be it landline or mobile), you just dial the number:
- 8765-4321 (from one mobile phone to another)
- 765-4321 (landline in the metropolitan region to another landline in the metropolitan region)
- 654-321 (landline “en regiones” to another in the same area)
From another area code within Chile, you dial one of two ways:
- 0, then the area code, then the number
- a long-distance carrier code, then the area code, then the number
When dialing from a cell phone and many landline phones you don’t need to dial the carrier; your local service provider will make the long-distance connection. It’s handy to review carrier costs and memorize one or two of the carrier codes to use when at a pay phone or another phone that requires it. (Also, you might be able to save money on long-distance calls from your home by dialing a carrier code.)
So a domestic long-distance call will look like one of these:
- 09-8765-4321 (any landline to any mobile)
- 02-765-4321 (mobile or outside Santiago, to Santiago)
- 111-2-765-4321 (with carrier, to Santiago)
- 012-654-321 (Santiago or mobile to outside Santiago)
- 111-12-654-321 (with carrier, to outside Santiago)
How do you know if you need the carrier code or not? Just dial without it, and the phone will complain if it wants one. Also, pay phones should have dialing instructions on them.
From outside Chile, you don’t need a 0 or a carrier code, just prefix the area code and number with Chile’s country code, 56. Below, the plus (+) sign is a placeholder for the international long distance dialing code for the country of origin (011 in the U.S.A., for example).
- +56-9-8765-4321
- +56-2-765-4321
- +56-12-654-321
To call another country from Chile, use the same format as for domestic long-distance calls, but with an extra 0. That is
- 00, then the country code, area code, and number
- a long-distance carrier code, then 0, then the country code, area code, and number
A U.S. number will look like this:
- 00-1-123-456-7890
- 111-0-1-123-456-7890
Be sure and check out Voice Over IP (VOIP) options for your international calls.
More on the cellular phone system
When cell phones were first introduced in Chile, the billing method was Receiving Party Pays, in which the mobile phone owner paid for both incoming and outgoing calls and the caller did not pay more for a cell phone call than for a landline call. This is the system used in the U.S.
Today Chile’s billing method is Calling Party Pays, which means making cell phone calls can be expensive, but that owning a cell phone and receiving calls on it can be very affordable.
When I got my first Chilean cell phone in 1999, cell phone numbers had 7 digits. When writing down your mobile number for someone, you would probably write it like this:
(09) 876-5432
…using the area code to show that it was a cell phone number.
Several years later, when cell phone use exploded and it became necessary to increase the number of new phone numbers available to be assigned, the government added a 9 to the front of all existing 7-digit mobile numbers, and began assigning 8-digit numbers beginning with 9 or 8 (numbers beginning with 7 and 6 appeared later on). So the mobile number that you used to dial from a landline like this
09-876-5432
you now have to dial like this
09-9876-5432
So you’d think that now, years after the 8th digit was added, people would give out their mobile number using the full 9 digits, or just the 8-digit number, since people would no longer confuse it with a landline. But no. More often than not I see mobile phone numbers written this way:
- (09) 876-5432 instead of (09) 9876-5432
- (07) 876-5432 instead of (09) 7876-5432
- (06) 876-5432 instead of (09) 6876-5432
The 9xxx-xxxx guy you can forgive; his phone number probably used to look like that and maybe he just can’t accept the change. But those last two are just plain WRONG. There are no area codes 7 or 6 in Chile, never were. You cannot dial any of those numbers from any phone and have the call go through correctly. This is a major pet peeve for me. So I ask you as a personal favor, when you give your cell number out, please please please write it in one of these two ways:
- 8765-4321
- (09) 8765-4321
Thanks!
See also:
- Dialing information from the Subsecretaría de Telecomunicaciones, including area codes and long-distance carrier codes