Summer 2008 USVI Coverage Review

[Gamer03]

Well I got back last night from a nice vacation in St. John, Virgin Island. My family and I drove into Miami and flew from MIA non-stop to STT. To get between St. Thomas and St. John, you need to take the boat ferry. Below is the coverage report while on St. John and St. Thomas:

On the east side of St. John (Coral Bay), AT&T was non-existent since you are picking up the towers from the British Virgin Islands and Tortola. The carriers that you could select were CCT Boatphone, C&W [Cable and Wireless (Caribbean)], bMobile, and AT&T (although since there is only one tower on St. John, it was too weak to make or receive calls). Coverage however was excellent with the roaming providers, but we did not want to pay $3.49/minute.

Our second villa (it is a long story but basically our first villa had water seeping up from underneath the tile and grout in the master bathroom) had an AT&T tower facing towards it so we had full AT&T Edge service for the last 4 nights on the island. My Sprint phone still worked in Cruz Bay (west side of the island) but Verizon is always roaming down in the Virgin Islands so basically it is a paperweight unless you want to pay the high roaming charge. So if you are playing a trip to the USVI, I would suggest AT&T. When we were roaming with AT&T, all of our phones (two Tilt's and two Razr 2 V9's would display the roaming carrier's name which is handy since it would tell you if you were going to end up paying a high rate just to check messages and make calls). So we are definitely happy we bought four AT&T phones before we left since this was our only means of communication.

[Eric47]

good story!

[Charlyee]

Wirelessly posted (Treo 750: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.6) UP.Link/6.3.1.17.06.3.1.17.0)

Great trip/coverage report Erik. Glad everything worked out for you. That was pretty courageous to go off two days after getting 4 new phones.

Did you notice any difference in quality from one roaming partner to another?

I didn't realize the roaming partner's name would show in USVI, thought it only happened outside US territory.

Thanks for the report & also for the inside scoop.

[Gamer03]

Wirelessly posted (AT&T Tilt: Opera/9.51 Beta (Microsoft Windows; PPC; Opera Mobi/1718; U; en))

Originally Posted by Charlyee

Great trip/coverage report Erik. Glad everything worked out for you. That was pretty courageous to go off two days after getting 4 new phones.







Did you notice any difference in quality from one roaming partner to another?







I didn't realize the roaming partner's name would show in USVI, thought it only happened outside US territory.







Thanks for the report & also for the inside scoop.

Hi Charlyee. We decided to do this since we wanted to try out new phones and get used to them. The call quality was excellent on all providers. We only called under the roaming providers a total of 4 minutes since $3.49/minute adds up fast. In fact I think two of the companies were related but I may be wrong. I too did not realize that the roaming providers names showed up in "US" territories.

[Barciurek]

I don't understand why U.S. Virgin Islands are "international roaming" since it's a US territory?

[Gamer03]

Originally Posted by Barciurek

I don't understand why U.S. Virgin Islands are "international roaming" since it's a US territory?

Well it has both native AT&T and roaming AT&T on St. John. Certain "areas" of both St. Thomas and St. John are not covered by native Sprint or native AT&T. For the most part, you are fine in St. Thomas if you are on the right side (east side) of the island since you will be receiving native Sprint and native AT&T in Red Hook. When driving westward towards the airport on the roads, AT&T is still native whereas Sprint is either roaming (if you check the allow roaming on your device) or no service if it is set to Sprint only. Once you get about 2 miles east of the airport, Sprint is native. AT&T was working the entire time across St. Thomas and was native about 90% of the drive westward.

On St. John, you have native AT&T and native Sprint (once you leave Cruz Bay and drive about 2 miles east it is gone) in Cruz Bay and even up to about 10 to 15 miles east of Cruz Bay (AT&T is native only and Sprint stops working 2 miles east of Cruz Bay). After that both are roaming due to you picking up a signal from the BVI and Tortola (especially if you stay at Coral Bay which is on the east side of the island). There is only one tower on all of St. John (the island has an area of only 19.61 sq mi) and that is AT&T. It covers Cruz Bay and areas to the east right up until you get to Coral Bay and then you are roaming. Even the north side of the island where most of the better beachers are at is roaming at $3.49/minute with AT&T.