Residential Dial-Up

We use dial-up through Innovative, so far, knock wood, no problem. We use the computer for surfing and e-mail primarily.

Onika,
We use VIPowernet thru Innovative. So far, so good.

I hear that earthlink has a local dial up number and works well!
Ronnie

Here is the run down on all of the ISP Locally...

Dial Up Service

VI Access.net - Works Great Don't Give Problems, Support for it is aiight but not the best.
Price
$19.95/Month

VI Powernet.net - Some what OK... their services sucks u give them a call and they take you though hell to get it fixed.
Price
$14.95/Month

DSL Service

VIACCESS.net - "Good" Very Fast High Speeds 50kb - 300kb Downloads "Bad" The WDSL Service is over sold it works good after 6 or 8 in the evening and though out the day its soooo sloooow u can't even get thier website. When u do call for a tech from viaccess to come over to look @ a problem they would lie to you if u dont know anything about computers.
Price
$49/Month Speeds 250kbs
$99/Month Speeds 512kbs
Require to be in line of site for the Service to work good

VI PowerNet.net - "Good" Its a DSL and its kinda fast. "Bad" Its tooo dam sloow to be a DSL Service my dial up is better than this crap. you're pings will them would be sooo high i swear i'm something worse than dial up. PowerNet DSL is also over sold, i've got yet to see about 60kb/sec downloads. They have the whole system shared on only so many T1 lines.... thier tech service sucks.... i've waiting for the pass 3 weeks for a call back. Now das tooo terrible service they would be on your bad for your money but being on their back for service is a crime.
Price
$59 First 3 Months
$79 After
Require Additional Line
$25
Total
$104/Month

Now as u can see the best choice here for anything would be dial up
since its cheaper and more relible. I didn't list earthlink and msn because they aren't locally opperated. but they would be a better choice than what we have here.

So if any people go with earthlink u can't lose with them...

I called earthlink and they said they don't have an access number for the VI. So...I think I am left with vipowernet. Thanks for the suggestions, I am off to the Innovative offices. her's hoping they can hook me up at home today!

Earthlink does have a local access number and I'm using it currently. However at the first of the month I will be switching to another ISP that I don't see mentioned here yet. They have a local number and charge only $12.50/month. I was told of this ISP by the internet cafe above Tiffany's. It is: surfgreat.net . I'm sorry I did have their phone number but have mislaid it.

Paul,
You should check with your prospective ISP again. Mine was surfbest.net and they just got booted off their local access line 2 weeks ago and don't have current plans to get started up again. Surfgreat.net sounds awful familiar....

surfgreat.ne IS the name of this company and they reportedly have 50,000 access numbers nationwide, you can visit their website and check the e-mail I sent you on how to find out more about surfGREAT.net, and where I learned of it.

Earthlink does provide Dial UP service to the Virgin Islands. I have been using it for over six months now. It is excellent and the connections are moslty at 40k to the 56k..surfing speed. It is good for Dial up. I have never had a problem in that six month period. They have a local dial up number, 777.. etc. no long distaance fees. They do also have free 1800 dial up numbers at no additional charge..

They are also working on setting up DSL coverge in the Viring Islands. THIS WILL BE EXCELLENT.. Seeing that several other DSL providers here have problems. I cant hardly wait.

http://www.earthlink.net
1800 earthlink
PS.. This is the best i have seen thus far...

See my response below.. www.earthlink.net
EXCELLENT>>>>

Onika,

surfVI (www.surfVI.com) is a local provider. Local dial-in number, $13.96/month.

You won't have to worry about them going "belly-up" or not being able to contact customer support.

Alternately, there's broadband!

Best,

LR

After using viaccess and ATT, both with innumerable problems and ready to throw in the towel, I finally went to Earthlink a few years ago and have found them excellent, despite a few glitches here and there involving their updating certain things and my using a Mac. I'm not a computer whiz but although their monthly charge is $25+ a month they have awesome spamblocker, virus blocker, suspect email services and a whole bunch else which is all included. Their tech help is excellent. And they do have a local dial-up number which I'm so used to that I've forgotten it but I think it might be 777-5511 or something like that (old age takes its toll...)

If they can ever get the high-speed access going here it would be awesome. You can blame Innovative for that, but that's a whole 'nother story!

Hi Onika!!

We're very happy Earthlink dial up users. Have had no problems getting online except for one situation in the last few weeks that actually turned out to be caused by Innovative routning too much traffic through their phone lines. We asked Earthlink to set up a second dial in number when this occurred (before we knew that the problem was with the phone company) -- I am supposed to call back with my problem ticket number in the next few weeks to see if they are actually going to add an additional dial-up number for us.

(FWI, the problem that was caused by Innovative resulted in us being unable to connect to any dial up service, including AOL, and if we did manage to get through, the connection speed was averaging 4 kbps or less. We've never been so happy to get connected at 28.8 kbps again!)

Earthlink also has great customer service and a full service web mail system so you can access your email from any Internet connection. Without any specials, we pay $21.95 per month, which includes 7 mailboxes, some storage space on their server, and the Earthlink connection software that includes a firewall, virus protection, parental controls, and scam blocker, pop up blocker, and spam blocker tools.

Hope this helps!

--HC

Not sure how this posting got revived, but thanks for all the referrals guys!

We have been with surfvi.com for a few months and other than ocassional dropped lines or problems connecting we are happy. They are cheap too!

hi STT Resident
What were the mac problems you encountered? I'm a mac user and have been thinking about switching. Any info you could give me would be much appreciated! thanks

First to HipCrip - you're right, it's 21.95 a month. Mine went up a little bit because I added some email space.

To islandjoan, I'm still a big fan of earthlink because I really think they offer the best all0inclusive deal there is - as HipCrip documented much better than I.

They recently switched to Webmail Beta and when I tried to access it I was told that it wasn't presently available to Mac users. That was fine and I had no problem until they did something or the other a couple of weeks ago which resulted in my getting a security alert message every time I went to Webmail. That damned "ping" and security alert message drove me nuts.

I first contacted them via email and was told to do a whole bunch of things which didn't work. Then I contacted them by telephone and was given details on how to download the latest version of Internet Explorer and that didn't work either. I went via email again and got another set of instructions which were totally confusing because I couldn't find what they were telling me to look for and readjust.

I then sent all their correspondence to my Mac "guru" who is now living on St. Maarten but will be here on STT this month and will reconfigure everything for me. His comment on much of what they were asking me to do was based on the fact that I'm using OS 9.2 and should be on OSX and that they obviously weren't paying attention because in all my communications I've told them exactly what I'm using; secondly, in re their last email where I couldn't find what they were telling me to reconfigure? "They think you're using Windows!"

I think one just needs to hit the real MAC person to get the right advice and I'm certainly going to take this up with Earthlink once I'm back to normal. That will never happen - I meant when my computer is back to normal...

But Earthlink is really really good and what you get for the price is quite awesome. MACs are pretty much immune to viruses but, notwithstanding, Earthlink's basic service and all the filtering devices they offer at no charge suit me just fine.