Cell Phone

Hi Cayce.

Some folks have Cingular, some have Sprint. Your best bet is to ask folks where you live and/or work which provider(s) they use. There are many folks on island using Cingular but we live on the northside and unlike Sprint, Cingular picks up towers in the BVI and those calls are charged international rates.

Thanks for the quick reply. I should be more specific. I don't live on island yet, I'm moving at the end of summer. I'll be living with friends by Bolongo. They currently use Sprint, but don't have a lot of luck with it at their house. I feel like I've heard Verizon is the way to go, but I could very well be confusing that with Cingular. Any more info would be greatly appreciated.

Your best bet is to wait until you get here and then ask your neighbors and co-workers which service provider they use. Spotty cell service can be a problem on island and your friends' experience with Sprint and my experience with anything other than Sprint is not uncommon. If you select a cell phone service provider ahead of your arrival you'll likely be locked into a contract that can be costly to sever if the reception is lousy.

We don't have local Verizon service. Definitely check exactly where you are living- some parts of Bolongo seem to be in a black hole. I have also noticed that some phones provide better service, if that makes any sense. We are happy with our new Cingular. Centennial also has good local service, but not too good if you want to travel.

One of the more annoying things about all the cell providers is that their messages are all in Spanish.

I have Cingular Service. With their "NATION" plan, in the states or in the USVI you are not charged extra for roaming or long distance. I get good service on STX and STT. I have rarely had problems getting spanish speaking customer service.

Check out the area you use the phone most. Remember, when you roam their is no long distance or roaming charges.That might be important. My bill is always about $40 a month including everything. I think new subscribers might pay more now.

Hi stxer.

You're right, Cingular doesn't charge roaming charges for calls within the U.S. (states and USVI) but on the northside of STT Cingular calls frequently connect through a tower in the BVI and Cingular invariably bills those calls as International calls because they see the call as between a foreign country (BVI) and the U.S. and you have to fight with Cingular and PROVE that you weren't outside the U.S. in the BVI when the call was made -- far too much hassle on a monthly basis not to mention that it can be difficult to prove.

Thanks for all the help, this board is really great. I think I'll have my friends ask around the neighborhood. At least now that it's narrowed down to Sprint and Cingular I can start scouting out plans and phones.

I live in the states but will be moving to STX eventually so I took a trial run with Sprint down to STX a few months back and it worked most of the time for me. I have a plan that does not charge any roaming fees so there were no extra charges when I got back. I actually have more problems with my service in California than I did I on the island.

Since this is the relocation forum, I'd just like to put out a word to those who move here with their stateside cellphones. It's all well and good that you can maintain your cellphone service here and can call your family and friends all over the US for nothing.

BUT, if you come here looking for a job, an apartment or anything else locally, just remember that many of us here still just have landlines and calling you back results in our paying long distance charges - which we won't do, for the most part.

A small caveat but...

With the Cingular nationwide plan that has a local island phone number, you can still call your friends and family in the states for nothing, because there are no roaming or long distance charges. Any of your friends who are calling you from cell phones probably also have no long distance fees and can call you for free. Cingular to Cingular is also free all the time and you don't even get dinged for plan minutes.

I went to K-Mart and signed up for a Cingular phone.It came with a 30 day trial.If at the end of 30 days or 50 min.of cell use i returned the phone and all charges were refunded to my credit card.I found that the phone worked all over STX with the exception of in some remote parts of the east and west end.

I have Cingular service with a State-side #, which I really don't want to change at this point. So far, I have not been charged for any calls to STT, but wondering if I'll be charged for calls to the US from STT? Is there any way to know if you're linking up to a BVI, rather than a USVI tower? I'll look into what kind of minimal plan with local phone # I can get once I'm in STT - any suggestions on that?

Thanks!

Hi Ann.

The Cingular plans available in the USVI don't charge for calls between the U.S. and STT regardless of the direction of the call. Plans procured in other states can vary in their treatment of the USVI and calling them does not always get you a person knowledgeable about this infrequently queried aspect of their plan. Since the tower issue only affects a minute segment of the cell phone market, US phones do not generally indicate the tower location. As to inexpensive phone service with a local number, most people have a landline through Innovative, which is not wholly reliable, but probably the least expensive stand alone option. We have VoIP through Ackley, which is inexpensive and reliable, but you need to have high speed Internet service to have VoIP.

I've posted this before and will post it again if necessary! Jason Ackley's op-ed on our online newspaper, St Thomas Source, was an eye-opener for me and totally explains the problems with cellphone services here in the islands:

new.onepaper.com/stthomasvi/?v=d&i=&s=Commentary:Op-ed&p=1147234682

Cheers!

Alexander is 100 % correct about cingular as I have used it for many months in STX but my phone is based out of Michigan. They are best.

Wow, very interesting article, STT Res.

Did I miss i's mention, or does anyone know if All Tel work from there?

Hello everyone,

I heard people in US VI are very friendly. I might move to st.Croix soon if offered a Job.
What i understood from Tedd Wallace and East End Doug that cingular Wireless are the best cell Service to get.

However, dntw8up mentioned getting VoIP from Ackley, having already High speed Internet service.

Could you explain to me how does the VoIP works exactly, i mean steps and process to use and make calls out.
Are you also capable to receive calls, through the PC or Laptop i guess?

I would appreciate your valuable feedback.

Thank you
Ramy

Hi ramy.

VoIP converts the voice signal from your telephone into a digital signal that travels over the Internet. If you are calling a regular non-VoIP phone number, the signal is then converted back at the other end.

If you can obtain high speed Internet access at your residence when you move to STX and if your ISP offers VoIP and you opt for it, then you will have an adaptor in your home (Linksys router box) but otherwise using VoIP will not seem any different than the traditional telephone service available in the states. It is, however, very different from the traditional telephone service available through Innovative, the islands' land line telephone service provider, because VoIP here is far more reliable.

If you have decent online connectivity, you can download a program such as SKYPE to use for telephone calls. It's great for outgoing calls... but a bit more complicated to handle incoming calls since you have to be online and there to accept them. It also works for video calls, which can make some of the family and friends back home happy/jealous to see you tanned and in shorts in the USVI when they are in the depths of a cold winter on the mainland.

We use Skype on a palm computer when we travel but have found VoIP to be the superior product at home because you get telephone features like voice mail that services like Skype are not (yet) able to provide.

My last bill from Cingular had roaming charges because of BVI tower signals prevailing (I live on the northside of STT), resulting from calls made and received on one particular day. I might mention that this is the only time I've had roaming charges in my 5 months of living on the northside. The lady I spoke with in customer service was very nice. She offered an apology, told me the roaming charges would be immediately credited to my account (I checked the next day, and they were), and told me to check my bill each month and notify them right away if it happened again. I may have gotten the one person in customer service who wouldn't have given me a hard time (I wrote her name down, just in case), but my experience with them was not at all unpleasant.