Trip Report - Riiing/united Mobile

[Bossman]

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.