Just thought I?d give some info regarding my roaming experience with my riiing card. I was on a Eastern Caribbean cruise. In St. Thomas US Virgin Island, the sim failed to register on any network. I tried to manually register it on the 2 Cingular networks and Suncom network that showed up in the available networks list on my V551, but each of them came back with ?sim registration failed? I knew something was wrong, because in the US it roams on both Cingular and Tmobile. I tried with my Virgin UK sim (using a noka 3120), the same thing. Well, the USVI (and Puerto Rico) happened to be part of SprintPCS? native coverage. So, I was able to use my sprint phone both for calls and data (tethering) at no additional cost. Now, riiing lists the USVI as one of the countries with free incoming calls. Don?t know why the thing did not work there.

Our next stop was St. Maarten. About a couple of hours from St. Maarten, I turned the phone on and it picked up AT&T(Not sure what Island), Called to check balance to make sure it works. About 20 minutes after that I got a ?Welcome to Anguilla blah blah blah? SMS from Cable & Wireless (C&W). I searched for available networks it showed about 8, including Orange, AMIGO, Bouygtel-c, Telcell, etc. It stayed mostly on F-Orange. All calls were completed successfully via CBW. Call clarity was excellent too! I think incoming calls were charged at 19 euro cents/min or so. I had 20 euros on the sim and I still had over 16 euros after about 5 calls each lasting about 4 ? 6 minutes. About 1 hr. after leaving St. Maarten I received a call that lasted about 10 minutes, and I checked my balance after that, but did not get charged. I was roaming on AT&T. Whatever island it was must have free incoming calls using riiing.

Final stop was Princess Cays, the Bahamas. This is a private island owned by the cruise line (Princes Cruises). There was no service here whatsoever. I know the Bahamas does have GSM service, but this particular island did not have any kind of service. I did not see anyone or any of the local merchants use a mobile either. Probably too isolated for it to have service.

I did not even see St. Maarten listed on riing?s website. I don?t think they can list every island though, especially with the proximity of all these islands to one another. I?d say just take the sim wherever you go and see if it works.

BTW, the virgin sim registered and stayed on Bouygtel-C. As soon as I picked up this network I received a SMS from Dominos Pizza advertising the special of the week, with a number to call J. GPRS access was available , so I used this sim just for email and to trigger one of the CBW calls.

I sorry that Riiing let you down. With Respect to St MAARTEN, St Martin is listed in Ring's directory, but you are correct about St Maarten.

The Bahamas is a tough country to roam in. Roaming is a one way revenue street with that island. The local prepaid sim is expensive and not tourist friendly at all. The phone companies that do have roaming there charge through the nose. If anyone has any good suggestions for the Bahamas, I am interested.

Back in the days of analog phones, Batelco also had a minor billing scandal that drove many U.S. carriers away.

With respect to your Virgin SIM did you pass a British check and get roaming activated or are you just using the limited roaming they have on prepaid. Virgin UK is tough. I have a friend who has lived in London for ten years, owns straightout a condo worth 300,000 quid, but could not get approved for roaming because: (a) he is not on the electoral role; and, (B) his pay check is cut out of New York rather than London.

As for the virgin sim, It's just the regular roaming they have for prepaids. I bought the sim on eBay and it picked up Tmobile USA as soon as I popped it in my phone. There is no limitation AFAIK, except that the number of countries one can roam in is less than postpaid. I use it mainly for data outside UK, and for voice calls if I am in the UK.

Globalstar?

Agree with the comment that a satphone would be a possibility for usage in the Bahamas. Globalstar has the best rates for LEO satphone service in the Caribbean, but Iridium would also be a good choice. A satphone would be particularly desirable on a cruise where you visit small islands with no service or when you are at sea and can't pick up a land based tower reliably. Handsets for either service are expensive though, so a short term user might be better off renting one from a dealer.

Batelco does offer their RoCKit gsm prepaid service that offers decent outgoing local rates (Bahamian$.33 peak/$.15 offpeak) but international rates are very high (over $1 a minute). A prepaid international calling card or callback service could be used to get around this. The sim card also is expensive to purchase: $US89 from Telestial or $US99 from Cellular Abroad. Hopefully cheaper purchased in the Bahamas. Not aware of an international callback prepaid sim card (eg United Mobile or Hop) that works in the Bahamas. Relatively few international roaming agreements exist with Batelco (website lists only 27) likely due to the previously mentioned billing scandal.

Got a giggle out of the Domino's Pizza SMS ad. Wonder if they deliver to a cruise ship? :P

At least now I know not to really expect service in Bahamas. I also thought that Domino's Pizza SMS was funny. I was really impressed with CBW too. Every single call completed sucessfully, and it was very clear.

BTW, I believe I was roaming on a network(AT&T) in Anguilla, when I received that call that I did not get charged for. Riiing has free incoming calls in Anguilla. GSM world also lists Cingular as one of the carries there.

http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_ai.shtml

Cingular's Caribbean infrastructure (including, now, ATT) was purchased by Digicel, which has Anguilla service (and it is excellent!). My experience with C&W in Anguilla has been disappointing :thumbdown: , but Digicel's arrival in late 2005 has forced C&W to improve :clap: I was able to use Hop for a single call in St. Maarten, at the airport, but was subsequently shut out (cellular magic?). OTOH, I used Hop successfully for 4 days in St. Barths, on Orange network. Initially, I was able to call the UK and EU readily, but unable to call US; filing an email complaint resloved the issue with 24 hours. The circumstances I describe here were in the first half of April 2006.

It is well known that C&W tried to block the use of callback services. When I was in Bermuda I deliberately used the two phone approach to callbacks and it seemed to work. In a country like that, I think I might go to GPRS triggering just to make things even more difficult for them to detect.