Minutes and this time music. I apologize for my absence from the blogosphere for exactly a month: I've been on vacation . Taking the strength to work, although I've noticed that all the rest of the world can not stand 72 hours at the pace of a newsroom. Also things have happened to me: I pontificate about digital journalism in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia) and I've been lame about to stay in the Camino de Santiago. And above all there are things that caught my attention and I hope to have in the coming days in this space I have so abandoned. said that minutes and this time music. After spending eight days in Cartagena de Indias and two of them giving a digital journalism course I suppose that what he would discuss the charms of one of the most beautiful cities in America or to speculate on the future of the web in plan junior guru. But no, I will discuss one of the things that struck me in Colombia. For its uniqueness, ingenuity and omnipresence: business minutes. But do not worry fans of brainy topics that do not rule out further talk of the town walls or Simón Bolívar.
see, in Colombia, and Spain, there are several telephone companies. Each has its own tariffs and each applies a common tactic: charging their customers a much higher price when calling a mobile subscriber to the competition. Puesfijate that Colombians have found a simple way to circumvent this problem. Proliferate on the streets of the cities I've seen in Cartagena, but I swear they are all over the country, some simple street stalls often composed of only three elements, a person, a chair where it sits and several dilapidated mobile where only guess the numbers, and usually accompanied by a sign announcing Minute Phone or simply Minutes. The more complex jobs also have a table to support the phones in a drawer for changes.
The business, if you have not guessed, is this: if I have to call a friend who belongs to another company, rather than my phone, I approach a set of minutes and do it from a cell of the same company -have device for each. The guy charged me more than the cost of the call, of course, has to win something, but less than what I would be worth it to me. But the business is more round, as I consider my good friend and assistant for the entire time journalist Jorge Quintero. It turns out that many of these phones are discharged as phone companies to obtain lower prices. And because their owners can not justify so many different lines, some companies create fictitious name indigent-those who give four dollars, and applying through these companies new numbers with low fares. As I read, some even fake identities.
activity was illegal until 2006, as I read this comprehensive article where they explain everything much better than me. But the government, still according to this source, decided to authorize it because she lived on nothing less than 500,000. The figure seems exaggerated if you think it means more than 1% of Colombians, but I dislike it so much if I recall the composition of the urban wildlife of Cartagena. You see, I guess timers earn little to eat and perhaps controlled by the Mafia. But today, excited by the frenzied pace of writing I've thought that for a time change for me one : sitting in my chair at the small shadow, leaving me by the legendary placidity of the Caribbean, with a beer Club Colombia in hand, peeping slyly, "why not" conversations around the neighborhood while I spend my life in a corner of the most fascinating city in America.
PS: Ah, if I could write Colombian as they do there, would undertake the novel minutes s. The outline, would be the reconstruction of the life, passions, intrigue, love, jealousy, friendship, hatred of a neighborhood through the conversations that you hear a timer to your customers. The whole life of a neighborhood without leaving your corner. That left the idea in case anyone is encouraged.
Photo: Celine Massa
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