Cell Phone & Internet

Cingular is the dominant carrier in USVI. There's pros & cons to retaining old State-side service or getting new island service. I tell you the best advice....do a keyword search on these topics on this Message Board....extend your search to say a year back. There is so much great information that has already been shared ....too much to repeat another thread... but specific answers to all your questions and then some.

Through all of the cell phone threads on this board, I found that Cingular and Sprint are the services that work the best. My service provider was Nextel and Sprint just bought out Nextel.. I just switched my service over to Sprint so that I didn't have to pay a fee for breaking my contract with Nextel.. Sprint was great. I wasn't charged anything to switch over, I got to keep my same plan and my same phone number and they sent me my new phone for free. I am going to STT next month for my PMV, so I will find out then how good the service is. Maybe that can be of some help to you..?

I have Cingular and kept my stateside number. I think the best thing about it is I get English speaking messages/operators. My boyfriend got his phone here through Cingular and his messages/operators speak Spanish.

The only problem with keeping your stateside number is your mobile to mobile minutes won't register as mobile to mobile. On my phone, most of the numbers from stateside came up unknown which didn't allow me to use any mobile to mobile minutes between my husband and I and we both live in STX.

I have never had this problem when I make calls on STX between stateside cell numbers.

Jim

As much as I appreciate that cellphones have become this "New Age" necessity, I'm a landline telephone holdout. First, I won't call anyone back who has off-island cellphone service because the long-distance area code of course racks up my telephone bill. THEY can call ME at no charge but it doesn't work both ways and if they're on island and I'm on island, then you can see the problem.

Second, when trying to call someone on-island with on-island service, that repetitive nonsense recording of, "Please try your call later" gets old fast. I still haven't figured out which local cellphone providers have which prefixes but I can tell you that "514" is pretty BAD and that "626" is very good. I think the former might be Cingular and the latter Sprint but I'll stand corrected.

As far as the Spanish versions of, "The person who you are trying to reach has either turned off their phone or is out of the calling area right now" and, "All our circuits are busy right now, please try your call later" are followed by the English version.

Be joyful - Spanish 101 is right at your fingertips!

But I do have to agree with Fl.Barrier Islander as far as doing your homework and going through past posts and really utilizing this board for information whatever your questions might be.

There are many of us here who really want to help those who enter this board find answers to their questions.

Islander does an awesome job and has great tips for first-time posters but too many people are too darned lazy to do their basic research on this forum, and post questions which have been answered over and over and over again.

I doubt this post will change anything but I'd really like to see more regular posters on this site quickly and summarily refer such posters to the threads available.

Cheers to all!

Hey STT Resident! My friends (the "wankers") from Eastbourne Sussex will be arriving as scheduled on 3/17 and we'll be heading to T&T for St. Pat's special dinner. Ronnie is taking care of our early flight 3/18 outgoing Hoosier friends Friday nite accomodations who will also be joining us for dinner. Well...that's the plan for now anyway. I will do my best to stay on track because I look forward to meeting you!