VerizonWireless Puerto Rico is not building a network in Virgin Islands anytime soon

[agentHibby]

At 11:20 EST Puerto Rico Telephone Company, Inc. was elimated from Auction 58. They were only bidding on the license for the Virgin Islands. This means Verizon Wireless Puerto Rico will not be building a wireless network in the Virgin Islands in the next year or so.
Wirefree Partners III, LLC (Sprint PCS) is currently winning the auction for the Virgin Islands. The two companies have been the only ones bidding on it so far.

I am guessing that Sprint wants to keep the edge on roaming revenue there. I don't know of any other CDMA providers out their. Maybe some day Verizon Wireless can get free roam from Sprint.

[dallison]

with cing, we include PR and the US virgin islands

[jayc]

Originally Posted by agentHibby

At 11:20 EST Puerto Rico Telephone Company, Inc. was elimated from Auction 58. They were only bidding on the license for the Virgin Islands. This means Verizon Wireless Puerto Rico will not be building a wireless network in the Virgin Islands in the next year or so.
Wirefree Partners III, LLC (Sprint PCS) is currently winning the auction for the Virgin Islands. The two companies have been the only ones bidding on it so far.

I am guessing that Sprint wants to keep the edge on roaming revenue there. I don't know of any other CDMA providers out their. Maybe some day Verizon Wireless can get free roam from Sprint.

I'm hoping VZW will decide to pick up the license for them... On a good note Verizon Pacifica still has Guam!

[agentHibby]

Originally Posted by jayc

I'm hoping VZW will decide to pick up the license for them... On a good note Verizon Pacifica still has Guam!

Vista PCS nor the Cellco Partnership have selected to bid on the license so they can't bid.

[ehcruzan]

Originally Posted by agentHibby

I am guessing that Sprint wants to keep the edge on roaming revenue there. I don't know of any other CDMA providers out their. Maybe some day Verizon Wireless can get free roam from Sprint.

Centennial has a CDMA network here. It is an extension of their Puerto Rico network. They do CDMA in the caribbean as opposed to TDMA/GSM in the mainland US. They are 1st priority on the SPCS PRL, but I think SPCS might be 1st on VZW's PRL.

I'm surprised SPCS is bidding on this license as I thought they had 10MHz here. I keep hearing how super efficient CDMA is so I'm a little puzzled as to why they need more spectrum. Our population is roughly 100,000 between the 3 islands (really 4 if you count water island). They have 4 sites on St. Croix, but I'm not sure how many they have on St. Thomas although I think it may be 5 (St. Thomas has very little flat land). I guess I just have no clue when it comes to network capacity issues. Now that I think of it, the manager of my local store did mention they are having capacity issues. I simply thought they needed to add more channel cards. They have done well signing up customers including a huge chunk of Cingular's customers. And with EV-DO on their plate, which needs 5MHz of dedicated spectrum if I recall correctly, I guess they are short on spectrum. I just had no idea they even cared about our market.

[proud2bamerican8]

Sprint has offshore coverage in the Caribbean in Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands St Croix, St Thomas, St John, and in the Pacific on Guam. While other carriers have some of the same, I am not aware of any other than Sprint that have all.

[ehcruzan]

Originally Posted by proud2bamerican8

Sprint has offshore coverage in the Caribbean in Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands St Croix, St Thomas, St John, and in the Pacific on Guam. While other carriers have some of the same, I am not aware of any other than Sprint that have all.

Cingular has a far more extensive Caribbean presence through the AT&T Wireless purchase. I don't know if they have Guam covered, but they have coverage in Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and many Eastern Caribbean islands including St. Kitts/Nevis, Antigua, Trinidad & Tobago and many more islands. I'm too lazy to do a Google search for the rest.

[agentHibby]

Well at least the new PRL gives Verizon Free Roam in US Virgin Islands

[ehcruzan]

Originally Posted by agentHibby

Well at least the new PRL gives Verizon Free Roam in US Virgin Islands

I wonder how soon CDMA data roaming will be a reality.

[cryogenic]

Originally Posted by ehcruzan

I wonder how soon CDMA data roaming will be a reality.

not soon enough

[Andy]

Originally Posted by cryogenic

not soon enough

I heard it's in the works with some U.S. CDMA carriers, including Verizon Wireless.

[cryogenic]

Originally Posted by Andy84094

I heard it's in the works with some U.S. CDMA carriers, including Verizon Wireless.

still not soon enough for my tastes Should have already been implemented if you ask me. After all, it's been "in the works" for quite some time now. I guess it's just never been much of a priority.

[Andy]

I completely agree, but after this gets started we will be a great competition to GSM,data wise. Haven't heard anything about Sprint being in the works though...Carriers i've heard about are VZW, USCC and ALLTEL.

[coalminer]

Originally Posted by Andy84094

I completely agree, but after this gets started we will be a great competition to GSM,data wise. Haven't heard anything about Sprint being in the works though...Carriers i've heard about are VZW, USCC and ALLTEL.

My Verizon Blackberry will roam on Alltel now, have not tried any other carriers, and we have a Kyocera EVDO Verizon card, and it also roamed on the Alltel 1X network. ( dont know about EVDO )

One thing is that if you have an old account, you have to call and have the data roaming feature put on your account, it wont automaticly be there, if you just signed up, it might be there already because I recieved the PC card last week, and it roamed ok, and when I called into CS, they added the feature on my BB number, then it started to work.

[agentHibby]

You might want to find if you are charge 69¢ data roaming.
Hopefully not.

[Andy]

Originally Posted by agentHibby

You might want to find if you are charge 69¢ data roaming.
Hopefully not.

Where does Verizon state data roaming is 69c?

[agentHibby]

I did not see it the 69¢ data roaming mentioned anymore.
When Americas Choice I plans was around to buy, they would put that if you were roaming there would be a 69¢ charge. I understood alot, if not all of extended network was that way in the data transfer plans.

Originally Posted by VZW in 2003

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[Andy]

Originally Posted by agentHibby

I did not see it the 69¢ data roaming mentioned anymore.
When Americas Choice I plans was around to buy, they would put that if you were roaming there would be a 69¢ charge. I understood alot, if not all of extended network was that way in the data transfer plans.

I don't think this applies anymore as other users have stated using Quick2Net on Alltel.
Didn't know that this kind of data roaming was available in 2003.

[Airb330]

Since Cingular owns so many networks in the Caribbean--they should include them on the nation gsm plan. Or at least lower the roaming charges from 1.99 to .79 or something reasonable.

[ehcruzan]

Originally Posted by Airb330

Since Cingular owns so many networks in the Caribbean--they should include them on the nation gsm plan. Or at least lower the roaming charges from 1.99 to .79 or something reasonable.

They recently sold them to Digicel. There is a "favorable roaming rates" agreement in place however.