Telecommuting from the islands - would it work?

Rio,

I am doing it now from STX (my office/employer is based in Washington DC) -- we moved here a few months ago and I started teleworking in early July. Am using dialup while the only company that offer DSL in STX right now (Innovative) tries to figure out of they can find a line to run directly to my home as our existing phone line (installed June 2004) is incompatible with DSL because it is routed through a mini-plex. Am using Earthlink as my dialup provider -- they converted my existing DSL account to unlimited dialup for me in less than 5 minutes and have had no issues at all with outages.

It's not bad -- I use my cell as my business phone, do a lot of communication by fax and Priority Mail (FedEx and UPS must go through customs because the VI is considered an international destination, while regular old US mail can be delivered directly). Most priority mail I've been sent has been received in no more than 7 days, but snail mail seems to take at least two weeks to get to our box at Mailboxes Etc. Some snail mail I've sent to DC has taken 3-4 weeks to arrive.

Hope things are better re: access to DSL on STT or STJ than they are here on the big island -- am looking forward to what you find out.

HC

Many thanks, HipCrip -- yes, I was reading your saga about the miniplex issue; I hope that gets resolved! Internet access when choosing a place to live will be a top priority for me, since much of my work depends on me being online and accessing a remote system for about 4-6 hours every day. OTOH, that's all the hours I work on any given day -- not a bad tradeoff to bring a mainland income to the USVI! Like you, I would use a cell as my business phone, just as I do now. What kind of speeds do you get with dialup?

Your insights about mail and FedEx are extremely useful; I hadn't read that anywhere else -- thanks.

Rio

Rio,

Internet access and cable access were two of my must haves -- I work in politics and need my CNN and CSpan almost as much as I need net access. >:-) Beat this need into the head of any real estate agent who is checking our properties for you, and then double and triple check the info you get. We were told we could get broadband here. Innovative/VIPowerNet does a service audit as the first step in applying for Internet access, and someone on that audit team approved us for DSL, had us come in and pay for the modem/fill out the actual account request paperwork. It wasn't until two weeks later (when our computers and other belonging finally arrived) and after I had called for info needed to configure my connection that they discovered this whole miniplex issue.

I just checked the Choice Communications web site ( http://www.wdsl.netorder.html) -- they have reactivated the info about their Wireless DSL service, so it seems they might be accepting customers once again. Choice's WDSL is expensive -- about $100/month plus equipment rental. As their page on the coverage area they serve is less than useful, it seems I need to call or go in person to see if I am in a service area. Will let you know what I find.

In addition to being more affordable, Innovative/VIPowerNet also offers a dedicated IP address for only $5 a month more. That was an absolute impossiblity from any DC provider unless you upgraded to business service (at a cost of several hundred bucks more each month), so I was pretty impressed to find it offered here and for such a low price.

~~Sigh~~ The dialup speeds I was getting through VIPowerNet, and now get through Earthlink, are peaking out at 28.8k. Sure glad I upgraded computers before coming down here. *lol*

While the mainland salary in the USVI does put you ahead of many folks, be warned that it still goes fast down here thanks to things like hurricane insurance, elevated auto insurance prices, some food costs, etc. I find that our cost of living is pretty comparable here to what we paid in DC. Having that 4-6 hour work day here in paradise sounds like a mighy fine perk!

Glad to have you here. These folks are absolutely amazing at providing the most relevant info on the details needed to make a move down here go well, so keep asking questions and please do share what you find on your own. You'll find that the names you see on this board become real friends of yours pretty quickly. Can't ask for much more than that. ;?)

HC

HipCrip

Have you contacted SurfVi about their wireless high speed internet offering? I didn't have a clear line of site to their tower, but I did get 52K on their dial up service.

Another option is to use your cell phone as a wireless modem. Using Cingular/AT&T GSM service I was able to get 58K and reasonable connect time between drops.

With an unlimited data plan this is a viable option when compared to 28K.

Jim

My experience with Priority Mail (from the east coast) is anywhere from 2-5 days most of the time. Fedex/UPS/DHL is VERY expensive. It starts at $16-17 for documents and the price sharply increases as weight increases.

My experience with Innovative is OK. It works most of the time, but on Sunday night, I had a short outage for a couple of hours, where the Internet was slow and kept disconnecting. It might be because of a bad phone line and possibly had nothing to do with my DSL connection itself. It works most of the time, though, and I am glad I have it. If you have the cash, you might want to invest in a dialup account as well for whenever the DSL messes up if you need to use the net at all times. However, the outages are semi-rare, and are not a huge issue.

You also might want to check out Choice Communications' wireless DSL, but it doesn't work in too many areas and you have to be in their line-of-sight.

Rio,

4-6 hours a day, any where in the world sounds like a Trader. Am I correct? If so, would love a follow up from you on how things work with regard to Internet connection if you do move there. That's our biggest concern about moving there as it is also our only income. E-mail me any time. Thanks.

Bou'ya

Jim,

Thank you for the tips! I hadn't heard of SurfVI before -- they aren't listed in the phone book we have. Have to say I made a little choking noise at discovering there is a $495 installation fee. I'm adjusting to the $100/month cost (we were paying $34.95 i n DC for DSL). but the install fees are still eye openers.

You've been a terrific source of knowledge for me throughout this forum -- I really appreciate everything you've shared, and will thank you in advance for what is still to come. I'm sure there's much, much more I will learn from you.

HC

HC

You are welcome.

The guy who runs and owns SurfVI is the real thing. Technically savy, very friendly and reachable. I had several telephone and e-mail chats with him to discuss getting service. Unfortunately I could not establish a line of site to any of his towers.

His dial up service was rock solid. I get higher speeds on SurVI than anyother dial up ISP I have tried on STX and his service is cheaper.

If you are willing pay the installation I would be confident that SurfVI will deliever.

Jim

Rio/HipCrip,

I am afraid that I am the SurfVI guy that Jim mentioned , so I have to do a little bit of sales speach 🙂

Where are you located?

We have been expanding our service quite a bit this past month in St. Thomas and are planning for more expansion in St. Croix. We like for people to fill out the site survey forms as it all goes into our ticket database. We then use this when planning further expansion. (E.g. we still have the requests from Jim in there).

Regarding the outages that DSL and wireless providers have:

We have an Innovative DSL connection at one of our other companies offices that is not able to be serviced with our own product just yet. It goes down quite often, and is completely useless for the most part. We have a VPN setup between that location and our one of our tower site/data-centers, the average latency between the two is about 700ms, with quite a bit of packet loss. This makes things like Windows networking go crazy (machines dropping contact with the PDC, etc)

The surfVI broadband service has suffered from 1 outage so far. It was a lightning strike about 2weeks ago at one of our towers that services the downtown and havensight area.

Within 1hour and 10min, we had identified the problem as well as gone up and replaced the failed component with a new one from our warehouse. This was done in between storm cells as not to endanger the tower climber with more lightning.

All of our sites are bunkers and grounded properly. Lightning is a crazy thing, when you have 1million volts with 1us of rise/fall time, it goes just about anywhere it wants and sometimes it takes out equipment, there is not much you can do about it.

One thing that makes our service very different is the way it is sold. Innovative will tell you the maximum that you can expect (E.g. 'up to Xmbits'), but they won't tell you a minimum guarantee! We tell you would you are guaranteed as a minimum, and give you some extra bandwidth to allow you to burst as needed.

We also provide our customers with a 'speed test server' that they can connect to and verify the upload and download speeds that they are getting.

Commercial customers also gain access to a dedicated portal that gives them a view into our network monitoring system where they can see what their connection looks like from our network monitoring system, generate reports, etc.

I could go on and on, but I don't want to get in too much trouble for a long-winded post .

Anyone that is interested can get more information from our www site at http://www.surfvi.com/
(we do dialup too for 13.96/mo)

Or by filling out the site survey request for wireless broadband:
http://www.surfvi.com/bigsurf/sitesurvey.html

Or by contacting me directly via email (jason@ackley.net) for any custom solutions that are needed.

Examples of our tower sites are at
http://www.towertop.com

I concur with the others regarding snail mail. Priority mail is random at best. I have seen things get here in 3 days, and I have seen them take 8 weeks (Yes, this is PRIORITY MAIL). Express Mail has yet to let me down, and costs about $1/lb . I have gotten things via Fedex next-day from California (thankfully, I didn't have to pay for it).

cheers

Hello:

I'm relocating from Atlanta, GA to STJ in October 2004. I've made a proposal to my board of directors asking to run our biz from my home in St. John. Can anyone tell me about DSDL service on St. John (Chocolate Hole). Is is available and what is the reliability?

Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Regards,

Lisa