Phone question

[UFgator24]

Do your cell phones work in Dominica? Do you have to call uber-long-distance costing uber-dollars per minute? Or do you have some kind of plan in place to allow local calls back to the US? The Dr. I interviewed with told me something like that. Thanks.

[TennisMan]

Do your cell phones work in Dominica? Do you have to call uber-long-distance costing uber-dollars per minute? Or do you have some kind of plan in place to allow local calls back to the US? The Dr. I interviewed with told me something like that. Thanks.

You'll be able to buy a local cell phone along with prepaid minutes and you can call home with the minutes you buy. Either Bmobile or Digicell. Also, when I lived at RUH and PBH there was a lady that installed and provided a prepaid land line with a US based number (I think this was an internet phone). They were all reasonably priced. Phone service to call back to the States is not something that will be necessary to worry about, good question though, as I had the same concern when I first started. Don't use your US cell phone on the island to make calls cause you'll get charged big time on long distance and roaming.

[DrMS]

Most people get a cell phone to use for local numbers and get either skype, vonage or packet8 phones to use on the island to call anywhere in the US or Canada. Then you can make calls any time and not worry about minutes. You can also receive long distance calls on your cell without having to worry about minutes and roaming charges.

[novamd]

Like everyone else has said, most people buy a cell phone once they get to the island...it's like one of those pay as you go phones. BUT, if you have a phone at home that has a removable sim card (ATT and Sprint usually use these phones, I know Verizon doesn't, and not sure about the others), you can have your phone "unlocked" and use the sim card from the cell phone down here in your US phone. That way, you can still have all the features of your US phone with your Dominica #.

Most people also use skype or Vonage (it's $20/mo with unlimited calling to US and parts of europe) too because the cell phone rates aren't exactly cheap....

[islandthrift]

Like everyone else has said, most people buy a cell phone once they get to the island...it's like one of those pay as you go phones. BUT, if you have a phone at home that has a removable sim card (ATT and Sprint usually use these phones, I know Verizon doesn't, and not sure about the others), you can have your phone "unlocked" and use the sim card from the cell phone down here in your US phone. That way, you can still have all the features of your US phone with your Dominica #.

Most people also use skype or Vonage (it's $20/mo with unlimited calling to US and parts of europe) too because the cell phone rates aren't exactly cheap....

Don't forget if you're bringing a phone from the US it needs to be an unlocked tri or quad band phone otherwise it will not work.

[UFgator24]

How do I know if my phone is an unlocked tri or quad band phone? I have a sony ericsson w580i from att

[kryptik]

How do I know if my phone is an unlocked tri or quad band phone? I have a sony ericsson w580i from att
did you get it from the carrier like tmobile or att? The fon itself is a quad band but carriers like to lock it so it only works on their networks. You can go to your carrier and request it to be unlocked. If you didnt get it with any carrier then it should work.
Go to Settings> Network> and look around the menus if you can see anything like 1800/1900/850..

[UFgator24]

I don't see anything like that on my phone...I'm guessing it's locked. And yes I bought it directly from ATT.

[kryptik]

I don't see anything like that on my phone...I'm guessing it's locked. And yes I bought it directly from ATT.
Go to any of the ATT stores and request it be unlocked.:cool:

[kryptik]

"If you have had your account with AT&T / Cingular for more than 90 days, you can call customer service and request the subsidy unlock code for free." that is a quote from another forum about the topic, apparently you can even do it over the fon.

[UFgator24]

Sweet, I've had my account for probably 8 or 9 years so I guess I'll try that. Thanks a lot for you help.

[kryptik]

Sweet, I've had my account for probably 8 or 9 years so I guess I'll try that. Thanks a lot for you help.
let us know how it goes,.....