I know cingular has great coverage in STT & STJ.

Best advice that I can give is for you to contact your service provider (in this case, Cellular One) and ask
(1) Does their service coverage areas include the USVI? (I'm only familiar with Cingular. Maybe someone else on the Board can provide you with an idea of the coverage for Cellular One on STT or STJ.)
(2) Do they apply surcharge for calls originating in USVI to Continental US? If so, what is the surcharge?
(3) Provide any other policies involving initiating calls to/from the USVI.

I can speak for Cingular since i have used them in the past. They are part of the national coverage and they have no surcharge.

Cingular works well. There are dead zones. However if you are a former AT&T wireless customer migrated to Cingular and have a AT&T SIM in your phone the service on a GSM phone is very limited.

Jim

To add to Jim Dandy's comment about Cingular if your are former ATT Wireless and still have an AT&T wireless SIM card in your phone, not only is the coverage limited, but you are likely to connect to service using BVI towers and incure International roaming surcharges, for which Cingular will likely try to force you to pay.

I used my Cingular phone on STT and STJ in June and July and incurred $600 in roaming charges because my signal was picked up by a BVI Tower. Cingular refused to believe I was in the USVI and refused to credit the charges. I filed a PUC, FCC and FTC complaint...and they eventually issued a credit when I asked them to explain why my bill showed calls just 2-5 minutes apart coming from the BVI and the USVI (I made back to back calls and they were picked up by different towers)..on multiple occasions. However, I just received the FCC notice that Cingular's reply to them was that they issued me a "one time courtesy credit" and would not credit if it happened again.

If you are a former AT&T Wireless customer who has not yet converted to Cingular becasue of your contract with AT&T Wireless (they won't let you out of your ATTWS contract to migrate over to Cingular, even though Cingular now owns ATTWS service- aren't they lovely?), you are likely to have BIG problems in the USVI and incur major expenses, for which Cingular may not take responsibility.

I have written to multiple senior execs at Cingular about this and haven't received one response.

If your Cingular phone display shows a series of numbers instead of the carrier's name, do not use the phone - this is when you are hitting an International tower.

My Verizion worked great, Nextel had zero service.

Thank you so much for that information i will let some of my friends know since i have always had Cingular but i know some people that have ATT. So this only applies to former ATT customers?

does t-mobil work out on st croix?

My situation only applies to former AT&T customers who have not yet converted to Cingular phones/SIM. There is a good Cingular network in the VI for legacy Cingular customers.

If you have an AT&T SIM in your phone you will see that your carrier is Sun Com when you are in Puerto Rico or on STX. ( I haven't been to STT since the AT&T/Cingular merger so I can't tell you what might happen there.)

Apparently Sun bought some or all of AT&T's business in the Caribbean. No charge for roaming on Sun if you have a Cingular/AT&T national plan, but as I said in my previous post the coverage on STX for Sun is limited, mid island, airport, Christiansted.

Also Sun's system messages and customer service is in Spanish

To use Cingular's service which is quite good you must have a Cingular SIM. I use my phone as a wireless modem and get higher speeds than I get using a landline.

You can tell what SIM you have by just looking at it. Cingular = Orange, AT&T = Blue.

Jim

On STT and most of STJ, a mainland Cingular phone will still say "Cingular" for coverage. However,sometimes out in Coral Bay, East End, STJ, you will pick up a Tortola BVI tower that is a series of numbers.

Just came back from STX and had a miserable time with Cingular customer service spending hours with technical reps that could not explain to me why I was forbidden (that was the term my former ATT phone spit back at me when I ran a manual GSM search) from using Cingular towers on STX and was only allowed to use SUNCOM towers, which as someone stated above, provides only very limited service.

SPRINT works pretty well on STT, but with some holes.

Max

We just returned from St. Thomas on Sunday. We took our Verizon phone but called before we left to make sure there is coveage. We were told that roaming would be $.69/minute plus any long distance charges.

bluewater I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM...
my c one picked up the bvi for a few of the calls that were made over by the ritz carlton area
they told me on the phone to be careful to look at the read out before using the phone
but my other t mobile phone is PERFECT THERE

have to do what you said i need to move over to cingular from a t and t....will call and ask them how to do it thanks for the tip

Sprint is .50/min for roaming and .25/min for long distance.

What does Verizon charge? They tell me .69/minute, but I know ther will be long distance carrier pass through charges. Anyone have an example of what that will run?