Computers and Internet service is available in Ecuador.

The big cities, Quito, Cuenca and Guayaquil all have high speed Internet which is available in most areas.

You will need to have high speed Internet for like talking on Skype (which is a free long distance phone service that you can do from Skype to Skype for free). You can check into it at www.skype.com .

You can get a US phone number (through Skype) for $30.00 a year which you can use through your computer with speakers and/or a headset. It does require high speed Internet to work properly, however. Anyone can call you from in the US or out of the country. I have higher speed now then I ever have had in the US (our speed now being 1100 up and 1100 down). In the US, 200 to 300 was very high up-speed for us.

You also have little Porta chips which is a USB chip that you can put into your computer for internet access. The two companies here for Internet and cell phones are MoviStar (pronounced MobiStar) and Porta. You can use the chips for Internet in your car and/or for hotels that don't have Internet service. In the little cities, Internet is harder to get.

They also have Internet cafés, some being wireless so you can sit outside hooked up to a wireless hub. If you cannot do that, you may have to use a computer inside, but if you have to have your own computer, you have to find a wireless or USB hub or chip/card like I mentioned above, or a good Internet service at your house.

Originally, when we first moved down here, we were using two laptops. We found a couple of the Internet cafés that would allow us to hook up our laptops to the internet. There were some configurations to do but once we got it done, we could just walk in, hook up, talk on Skype and do what ever it was we needed to do; upload, download, check our email, etc. Some of the internet cafés are slow and don't work out as well, but there are lots of ways to do it.

High speed Internet is available in some houses depending on the city. Some are not high speed connections so if you don't need the speed and just need to check email and surf, it's easy.
They call it DSL here and it is available through the phone companies. It's just not as fast but you might be able to still use Skype this way. When you're calling from Skype to Skype and it's on a slower Internet band then you may have some static and problems hearing one another.

As I mentioned above, you can call in the US and in Canada using Skype. For another $30.00 you can get your own phone number and it's unlimited. We have 5 of those numbers as we have 5 computers in our home. My wife has her own number, my daughter has her own number and I have 3 for my business lines.

So, people can call these numbers and they don't even know they are calling out of the country as they are a US phone number. And with high speed they don't even know the difference. It works great from Lan lines, cell numbers, etc.

If you need computers, it's a good idea to bring them with you. Computers are available here, desk tops, lap tops, monitors are all comparable in price but if you're looking for an Apple Mac, they are a bit more expensive here than in the US. The quality is not as good as what you can get in the US.

If you use your computer for business or don't want to part with it, bring it with you. I brought my Mac, 2 MacBook Pros and our wireless hub/back-up drive (called a Time Capsule). We bought a used Mac here and then bought 2 desktop PC's here also.

A lot of software and movies are cheap down here, due to no copyright laws here. Most of them are burned copies. To get a real, bonafied original copy, you will need to have then shipped to you as you won't get them here. There is a lot available here but bring the technology you want here with you if you can, as some of the technology here is expensive. Technology is considered a 'luxury' and you can be charged a 40% Luxury Tax on things like video cameras, TVs, etc.

If you still have some questions, please feel free to contact us.