Chile Forum

Power just came back on here in Las Condes... at least for the moment. Who was NOT affected by the outage?

It was a country wide blackout apparently. One person said "the flaw happened at the distribution centre, so they couldnt redirect the electricity.So it all went black"

Yep, it happened in La Serena too.

They asshats said Coquimbo to Puerto Montt.

back on in temuco. Hmmmmmmmm, might be a good idea to put a little redundancy in the grid.

Here's the up-to-date info on the blackout. If anything more is mentioned on it between now and when I go to bed I'll update the story.

http://www.thepulse.cl/2010/03/14/power ... -darkness/

You know, this country is getting a little too exciting for me at the moment.

Probably hackers.

This, like some of the early governmental wobbling on Feb 27th, shows the country is way too centralized. Piñera has been talking about decentralization, but his campaign site is down (or taken offline?) right now so I can't link to that part of his program. The official site for the government is all about Piñera right now and doesn't have search or contact info, while the links for news releases from the prior government are broken. They rushed to make it look like Obama WH's website (all about social media) but made a superficial job of it (I hate seeing form before function: look we have a new shining logo!). So it's hard to know what's the official plan for decentralization right now. It looks like this was the plan during campaigning:
http://www.granvalparaiso.cl/v2/2009/12 ... -efectiva/

I'm not holding my breath on meaningful decentralization happening in Chile. It's a shame. That France (where I come from) is highly centralized kind of makes sense for historical and geographical reasons, but this type of organization doesn't make much sense for Chile.

Thanks, thingit, for shedding a little light on the situation.

I honestly think Pinera and the center right want to decentralize because if for no other reason it would insure them another battleground even if they loose the next election. At the least there needs to be some direct elections on the regional level, and more autonomy in spending the money.

was out in Vina too,, also cell fone wasnt working,, this seems to be a constant problem,, do landlines in Chile work better? i am still in USA,, but my fiance is in Vina,, she only has cell,, does anyone recomend i get her a landline? With all the rumbling lately, seems cell service is out alot.I just dont know if landline would be worse or better. any input?

Garry wrote:was out in Vina too,, also cell fone wasnt working,, this seems to be a constant problem,, do landlines in Chile work better? i am still in USA,, but my fiance is in Vina,, she only has cell,, does anyone recomend i get her a landline? With all the rumbling lately, seems cell service is out alot.I just dont know if landline would be worse or better. any input?

Landlines are worse, if you ask me. We've had one that hasn't worked since January and it takes 46 phone calls to 23 people to figure out why. I actually find the cell signal here to be very reliable, save once-in-a-decade type emergencies like we've had lately.

ok ty good to know ill just stick too the cell

I don't know, if you get a landline, stick to the old and proven Telefonica (now Movistar) system as they were around before the cable telephone vendors.

I have through a number of years of blackouts in Santiago and on the coast always found them up and running (dial tone which does not mean you will get through if the entire communication infrastructure is maxed), even had dial tone after the 8.3 (localized) quake.

Late last night/early morning because of the blackout, my pareja in Santiago could not get through to me on the coast via our Movistar cells (not even text messaging) but she could use that same Movistar cell to call my Telefonica/Movistar landline.

SO I have found the old copper based landline system ultra reliable in terms of being the last to go out and the first to be active after an "event."

Yea, having put all the phone systems in Chile through their paces these last weeks (we have at least one of every company, and my cell bill is going to be astronomical), here is my review in order of most reliable:

Almost all Cell phone sms work to some degree (stateless, so will work even if the system only comes up for a few seconds)
Land line phones for voice, but were often only able to call within the city and international calls did not work for days.
Cell phones for voice, were able to connect at a national level. Entel and Movistar. Entel came up the fastest, Movistar had the widest and most stable coverage when it came up later.
Internet over Movistar 3g/edge worked the most, when there was a cell network working.
When power was up, VTR cable had the most reliable internet, followed by telefonica. Telefonica del sur is just buys from telefonica their lines.
Claro smartcom was garbage everywhere, and took over a week to repair. It still is not working in many areas in the South.
Vonage VOIP for about a week was the only way for us to get an international call through, as long as the telefonica DSL was up and running.
Skype completely broke down in most of the country.

Sat phones bought in Chile from Chilean companies are a waist of money. All of them are routed through Santiago. Santiago goes down, sat phones as far south as tiera del fuego quit working. Buy sat phone service from a foreign company with ground stations outside of Chile. I had a long conversation with some guys we ran in to from phones without boarders in the field. Their sat phones were working, when Chilean sat phones were dead in Chile. They said what they are selling in Chile that they call sat phone, are not real sat phones.