One of the most popular topics on Internet forums about St. John is, “Will my cell phone work on island?”
The answer is, most likely.
Both Verizon and AT&T/Cingular have coverage, but not island-wide. There are dead spots in the valleys.
One good thing to remember is that Verizon bills roaming charges for St. John calls, even within your plan minutes. Your Cingular plan calls incur no extra charge. VI coverage is included.
Virgin Mobile, which sells prepaid minute plans, says the VIs are included in its service. And if Virgin covers St./John, you can expect that Sprint Nextel phones will, too, because they are Virgin’s network partners.
Now, about the iPhone. On his Life de Life Living in the USVI, Jay reports using his wife’s iPhone with no problems on St. John, St. Thomas and St. Croix. Jay also reports that Lion in d’a Sun’s Matt Slayton recently upgraded his AT&T service to an iPhone. The service was activated in about b60 minutes. “By island standards anything that gets done in a hour is fast,” Jay added.
Meanwhile, on another forum, “Rokipatel” reported that he’d been told by the AT&T office on Puerto Rico that St. John would be covered by the next generation cell phone network technology known as 3G within six months. It is widely expected that Apple will announce a new iPhone model in June which will run on the faster network.
I have Sprint and my phone worked great all over the island. My Sprint phone also acts as a modem for my laptop but that part did not work. I used a wireless connection provided at the houe we were staying at.
I have Sprint and my phone worked great while in Cruz Bay. When I hit Cinnamon Bay and beyond I pick up British towers and they deny me service.
I am reading your newsletter on my iPhone while at the beach at Frank Bay. Have traveled the world with the iPhone with great service everywhere. In some cement buildings and behind hills there is no service just as with all phones. In Tortola the phone also works well and it tells you which server you are using. There it also changes with the direction as well as location. When I phoned home on several occasions, I was only charged a dollar roaming fee.