Eastern Caribbean SIM experience

[squawk1200]

Just returned from a cruise to St. Marten, St. Kitts, San Juan and Grand Turk. Took my Telnamobile SIM as well as my Mobal and my US carrier SIM is Sprint... Unfortunately I left my Piranha SIM at home. Not sure it would have made much of a difference if they are still using Telna's infrastructure...???

I'll preface this experience with the following words before the, “Why don’t you just use T-mobile?” crowd start their common chant... Unfortunately for one main reason, making the switch just does not make sense for me (at least at this time). I only go out of the US for maybe a week or two for an entire year so I don't see the financial benefit at the moment. Maybe if Sprint and T-Mobile ever do hook up, it'll make more sense to make the change


St. Marten:

• Telna - does not publish coverage for St. Marten although I did get voice service on the French side of the island. No data service whatsoever...

• Mobal – French side had coverage. Published coverage only claims GLP. Dutch side: “Emergency Calls Only”

• Sprint – French side had coverage. Dutch side: “Emergency Calls Only”

What I found most interesting is that Telna (known), Mobal and Sprint (all three) did not have service on the Dutch side of the island... All SIMs showed “Emergency Calls Only”... Yep, rebooted phone, changed phones and forced it manually to carriers... No dice on the south side of the island...

St. Kitts:

• Telna - publishes that coverage exists on St. Kitts, but I never received it. “Emergency Calls Only”.

• Mobal – No issue registering on network

• Sprint – No issue registering on network

San Juan:
Only used Sprint in San Juan as Puerto Rico is 'on network' for them. LTE there worked GREAT!

Grand Turk:

• Telna – Telna actually found service on Grand Turk both voice and EDGE data worked. I'm guessing that the 2G data issue was my Google Nexus One handset's limitation. Either way the data worked and I was able to use it just fine...

• Mobal – Registered on network but I never tried it since the Telna SIM was working.

• Sprint – Same as Mobal.

[rfranzq]

Perhaps some people here don't realise it but in the USA Sprint is CDMA.
So for this to work some 'magic' no doubt happened.
What phone did you use? Did you have a Sprint International SIM card?
Who gets those SIMs? What are the costs involved?
Anything else interesting that we should know or want to know?

[squawk1200]

Originally Posted by rfranzq

What phone did you use? Did you have a Sprint International SIM card?
Who gets those SIMs? What are the costs involved?
Anything else interesting that we should know or want to know?

Sprint provides the SIMs for the multi-mode handsets that they sell... Years ago the CDMA providers had very few choices for a CDMA and GSM capable handsets, but I think the technology has worked itself into a more mainstream environment nowadays. I have a Google Nexus 5. While Google designed this handset to work on just about every carrier imaginable, there are other similar ones out there; Samsung has quite a few models off the top of my head... I'm guessing it's cheaper for them to manufacture a single 'jack of all trades' handset. For the most part it's all done in software so you just tell the radio chipset who it needs to be today (CDMA/LTE/GSM/HSDPAx/etc..) and viola!

I'm not sure that Sprint provides the SIMs to anyone that does not have a handset (and possibly account) on their network. I would not rush out to get one. For the most part Mobal beats their pricing... Consumer data costs are out of this world (~$15/MB for international use)... Only benefit I see with Sprint's SIM is that you can just take your phone and go run about the world. But you will pay for that privilege...