High speed internet access

Crystal Palace has free wireless internet connection! I believe that some hotels do offer, but not many at all. Not even the Marriott! There are some hot spots about town.
Ronnie

I'm not sure if you were asking about high-speed in hotels, or its availability in general.

If you're asking in general, high speed internet is available on St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix, and Water Island.

Several companies offer it-

Innovative (the local phone company) offers DSL via the phone line system ("Powernet"). Requires an additional phone line. No guarantees about service or speed, but it's cheap. They are running a special right now for 35 bucks a month, no installation. We had PowerNet, and were really frustrated with the service- it would go out (completely down) frequently, latency was a huge issue, noone would return our calls. Some days, the speed was OK, other days, it was slower than dial-up.
www.vipowernet.net

Choice Communciations offers wireless high-speed internet. We also had this, and were frustrated at how often the service went down. Again, no service or speed guarantees. www.choice.vi, I think.

Ackley Communications offers wireless high-speed internet as well. Guaranteed speeds and service. www.ackleycomm.com or www.surfvi.com

There's also satellite service here - from a really nice guy named Cal- but your IT folks are right- the latency on satellites is ridiculous. They are really better suited for one-way distribution of idential content over a large geographic area (we have Cal's satellite TV and love it). Don't know if Cal has a website or not, but the name of the company is Satellite Entertainment Services.

You can search for "internet" on this board for more info.

Good luck with your move!

Best,

LR

Internet access in the VI is lousy at best.Trust me . I used to own an internet cafe in St.Thomas.Irrespective of the provider, the service goes down very often. If your job relies on critical internet access, USVI isn't a place for you. The other option would be to pay a monthly fee to some of the investmemt companies down there that have T1 lines to use their access during 9-5. Good Luck.

I must respectfully disagree with PT. I'm not sure how long ago he/she used to own an internet cafe, but it is NOT true that "the service goes down very often"-- if you have the right provider!

The VI does have challenges here that ISPs on the 'mainland' don't face- we are in the middle of the ocean, the terrain is mountainous, our wire-line infrastructure is iffy at best, and there are, of course, weather challenges (hurricane season).

However, take what PT says with a grain of salt- there are many businesses down here who rely on internet access -- which is why one ISP, at least, offers service level agreements and speed guarantees.

Do you research before making a blanket statement, PT- your claims may be applicable to some ISPs in the VI, but not to all of them!

Best,

LR

I've had DSL from Innovative for about 6 months now and the only time it has gone down was during island wide power outages. Speed has been good as I play a lot of online games that really need the bandwidth and I haven't had any problems with them.

Blaze,

Glad to hear about your experience with DSL on St. Thomas. What part of the island are you on? What type of speeds are you getting? Is DSL available on the entire island or are only certain areas wired for it?

I had heard two years ago that the local cable company was also offering cable broadband. Would you know the answer to this?

How have your experiences been with customer service with Innovative?

Sorry for all the questions, but broadband on the island is critical to me.

PT,

Would you have the names of the investment companies on island who would lease T1 space?

Any help would be appreciated.

Kevin,

Really, there is no cable here.

As I mentioned, Ackley Communcations/surfVI has guaranteed speeds and service- you can get anything from 192kbps (up and down) to multi-megabit/sec.

DSL from Innovative is based on the phone lines. The wireline infrastructure here is iffy at best- if high-speed is that critical to you, consider an alternative.

Good luck.

Best,

LR

Thank you for the help.

Kevin: Some people believe that the reason there is no cable broadband is that the phone company and the cable company are owned by the same guy! No incentive. This is a vote for Ackley, but you have to have line-of-sight on a mountainous island. Any time someone says "It is critical that I have X in the Virgin Islands," I think, "Uh-Oh!" I believe T1 lines are available through Innovative??

P.S. This is definitely one of those topics that you would do best discussing on island with the various players! Especially if you have special critical needs.

East Ender is right- T1 lines are available through Innovative, but what most people need.are talking about is a "T1 equivalent"- i.e., 1.5Mbps of bandwidth.

That's available through most ISPs who offer broadband here- but, again, Innovative and Choice offer you "up to" certain speeds- there's no guarantee! You could get great speeds, or you could get slower-than-dial-up speeds. (That was our experience with PowerNet- some days it was great; other days it positively crawled!)

Ackley Communications is the only company here that offers guaranteed speeds and SLAs.

Best,

LR