02-10-2006 This isn't really about cellular, but heck wireless is wireless 
especially when it leads to Internet. (source: www.yachtforums.com)

Today, 09:47 PM    #9  
aeronautic1 
Registered User (yachtforums.com)
 

Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Ft. Lauderdale
Re: bahamas email 

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when in nassau, stop by lyford cay. they'll give you a key for free wireless internet  

01-26-2006 Update - I just recently received an email from a visitor to this web site and article. The information pertained to the Paradise Island area around New Providence, Bahamas. It seems to indicate that a cell phone with Alltel CDMA service worked in that area. If anyone else knows more about this... please keep those emails coming (write: a_spicer @ bellsouth.net [remove any spaces before emailing]) Alltel company still hasn't responded to my inquiry about this. here's the clip of the email:

Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 12:51:55 -0500

Yes I saw your info about using Cellular service in the bahamas. I was =
on Paradise island even while driving from the airport to that island I =
always had service with Alltel. even though I was roaming with them =
Batlco <sp> told me that it would not be possible. that i had to have a =
sim card put into my phone. well alltel services do not allow me to have =
a sim card CDMA.=20

I Was there in the bahamas. the week of the dec 11 2005

Greg Shiver

* There was a follow up email which may or may not change that story (?) notice what is said after "update" in the later email.

Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 14:24:51 -0500

yes please use my info.=20

That is why i emailed you to begin with.
update did find out that it would work on systems with GSM=20
4 Operates in many major cities and countries where GSM network coverage =
and roaming agreements are present.=20
But Alltel does not have an agreement with the bahamas Alltel told me =
that.=20

my phone is the Motorola v262  for info on that phone.=20
http://direct.motorola.com/ENS/Web_full_specs.asp?Country=3DCND&language=3D=
ENS&productid=3D29751&strPrimaryOption=3DFS&lSecondaryOption=3D-1

           Performance Features=20
    =20
    =20
              Talktime=B2 : Up to 150 - 300 hrs. =20
              Standby Time=B2 : Up to 150 - 300 hrs.=20
              Bands4 : CDMA 800 / 1900 / 800=20
    =20

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* Also interestingly... someone posted on an online cellular related forum: http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=563257&page=2&pp=15 indicating that Analog CDMA may be (may have been?) available in that area. Read:

02-12-2005, 22:45

WDEngineer Radiation is good Phone(s): 1: Nokia 3650[3rd One :--(] 2: Nokia 3595 3: Motorola T720i(POS) Provider(s): T-Mobile/Powertel Vonage VoIP Cingular RIM-IPS Joined: Apr 2003 From: Hotlanta Posts: 644

I actually worked with BTC in their GSM conversion last year. As of know CDMA users can access the old analog system but at insane price$. I'm not sure who posted that they were able to use digital service with their CDMA phone in PI, but they must have been seriously mistaken. As of right now, BTC operates "QuickCell" which is a prepaid TDMA service and "CellOne" which is the new GSM service. You can roam with ease if you're a cingular customer or an Orange(european) customer. If you're with T-Mo or anyother GSM provider you will have to buy prepaid sim cards to get service. For CDMA users, you can rent GSM phones at the airport or from your provider back home but would need to purchase a prepaid SIM card locally. Service is flawless on Nassau and GBI and decent in the family islands, offshore coverage extends for about 3mi depending on the marina or nearest canal. AT&T users can use their cell phones on Nassau but not GBI(freeport) for some assanine reason. Hope this helps. __________________ Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Feraknig azmanig huh? Last edited by WDEngineer : 02-12-2005 at 22:49.

* Also interestingly... http://www.cdg.org/news/latest_news.asp?hnYY=2005&hnMM=11  This seems to indicate CDMA cellular service being deployed in the Bahamas (in contrast to: GSM which is what is published and know to be working for New Providence and Grand Bahamas [Source: Batelco Web Site]). Here's that article:

BTC Selects Lucent Technologies To Deploy 3G Mobile Voice And High-Speed Data Network In The Bahamas

NASSAU, BAHAMAS – November 16, 2005 – The Bahamas Telecommunications Company Limited (BTC), the leading wireless telecommunications operator on the island chain, today announced it has selected Lucent Technologies to deploy a third-generation (3G) mobile network based on CDMA2000® 1X and 1xEV-DO technology. The network will be used to provide roaming voice and mobile high-speed data services such as high-quality video-on-demand (VoD), downloading of large files, and Internet and intranet access at speeds of up to 2.4 Megabits per second to the growing number of tourists and business people that visit the Bahamas each year.

The Lucent-supplied CDMA2000 1X and 1xEV-DO network will be deployed on the islands of New Providence, Grand Bahamas, Bimini, Eleuthera and Exuma covering the main towns, hotels, resorts and airports with voice and mobile high-speed data services.

“We are very excited by the opportunity to offer advanced, high-quality mobile voice and high-speed data services to visitors coming to our beautiful islands carrying their CDMA phones, PDAs and laptop PC cards,” said Antonio Stubbs, vice president of planning and engineering for BTC.

Tourism is the Bahamas’ most important industry. According to the Bahamas Tourism Board, over four million tourists visit the Bahamas each year, with over 80 percent of them originating from the United States and Canada. The CDMA2000 1X and 1xEV-DO network will provide these tourists with the ability to utilize the same services available in their own country.

In addition to Lucent’s CDMA2000 1X and 1xEV-DO solution, Lucent also will supply Juniper Networks’ M-series Multiservice Edge routing platforms and Riverstone Networks’ MPLS-based carrier Ethernet routers. Lucent Worldwide Services will provide network integration, deployment and management services.

“BTC’s selection of Lucent’s solution to deploy the first 3G network in the Bahamas is quite an honor,” said Javier Falcon, vice president, Lucent Technologies for the Caribbean, Southern Cone and Central America. “Our state-of-the-art solution will allow BTC to expand their services offerings and deliver on their commitment to offer the highest quality services to their subscribers and visitors to the Bahamas.”

"We are very proud to have won this project based on strong customer relationships, product quality, dedicated support and perseverance,” said Heidy Frank, Lucent's regional sales director for the Caribbean. "We feel that this is the beginning of a long and very fruitful business relationship with BTC. We'll continue to work closely with BTC to ensure the successful completion of the network and provide them the required support as they roll out new 3G services. Lucent’s solution provides BTC with a cost-effective and easy way to manage the network and introduce new capabilities and services.”

Lucent’s Network Solutions Group is dedicated to helping wireline, mobile and converged service providers capture the market opportunities being created by the growing demand for “blended lifestyle” services. A global leader in the development of commercial 3G spread-spectrum solutions, Lucent's Network Solutions Group has deployed CDMA2000 and W-CDMA/UMTS networks with more than 35 customers on the continents of North and South America, Asia, Europe and in the Australia/New Zealand region. Lucent has deployed more than 140,000 spread-spectrum base stations for mobile operators worldwide, of which 90,000 are already supporting 3G services.

For more information, reporters may contact:

Ichiro Kawasaki Lucent Technologies +1 973 386 3479 (office) +1 973 477 4793 (mobile) Email:kawasaki@lucent.com

Marco Malfavon Lucent Technologies - Latin America +1 954 885 2810 (office) +1 305 773 9198 (mobile) Email:mmalfavon@lucent.com

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11-25-2005 Update - I just called Batelco, the Bahamas telephone and cellular company, because of another yacht project estimate that I'm working on. This client was interested in FAX capability as well as saving money over roaming with a US Cellular Service (such as Cingular). I had suggested getting a GSM Telular unit t o replace one of his Telular TDMA units and getting a BATELCO sim card for it. I asked Batelco during this phone call today if they had fax capability on their service. For GSM they said NO. For TDMA fax they said NO. I also asked again about Internet GPRS to which they also said no. "Not yet" on any of those items. They also said that they were not activating any new TDMA Service. I mentioned that their Outer Island / Family Islands areas were only TDMA. To that they said if someone was traveling to stay in those areas then with executive management approval it could be possible to activate TDMA service.

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From: <undisclosed>

Date: Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Subject: Re: New article on GSM Cellular in the Bahamas
To: a_spicer(at)bellsouth.net

Alan:
 
So far, Grand Bahama & New Providence (Nassau) has telephone but not internet service.
 
Regards, John Furrer

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* from a customer on a yacht in the Bahamas with GSM / GPRS Internet capabilities.

From: "Bob Kelley" <suppressed>
To: <a_spicer(at)bellsouth.net>
Subject: Cellular Service in Bahamas
Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 22:17:24 -0400

Alan,

 

I just read your article on Cingular service in the Bahamas. I was in Green
Turtle in the Abacos this week with my Treo 650 using Cingular GSM service
as my carrier. I had called and activated International Roaming before I
left. When I got there, my phone said I was getting a strong signal from Ba
Tel Com. I was unable to make calls. However, the phone did receive calls
from the USA. Strange. I just thought I would let you know so you can let
your other customers know.

 

Bob Kelley

 

Bob Kelley

Phone: 305-JUSTICE

Web Site:  <http://www.justiceforall.com> www.justiceforall.com

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Some seasoned sailors or yachtsmen will have experience already with cellular phone access in the Bahamas.If anyone has suggestions or better information I would love to hear from you. I'd like to have correct information on this page and for myself and my customers.

I just had a customer call today that I already knew was going to the Bahamas. I had set his yacht up on a system from Telular (SX5E) along with a special kit that I developed to allow the use of the GSM Telephone Service as well as the GPRS Internet Service. I didn't expect the GPRS Internet part to work in the Bahamas but I didn't expect to be hearing from him so soon about the Voice Telephone Service.

A little background, I did some research via the Internet regarding Cellular and related Internet Services for the Bahamas months ago because this is a re-curring subject of questions about the equipment and service availability. My research told me pretty much that the Internet was out, and that BATELCO was the Government run Telcom Orgramization of the Bahamas which runs Telephone, Internet, and Cellular Phone Services in the country. I checked both Batelco and GSM World and learned that The Bahamas are on GSM 1900 as well as some remaining older TDMA service areas. So I figured GSM was the way to go for the Bahamas in general. I figured most every yacht sailing there would go to dock in common places like Freeport and Nassau although it's difficult to tell even from BATELCOs coverage maps where they have GSM coverage.

The customer that called today was in an area known as the "Outer Islands" (Out Islands) or the "Family Islands" as they are supposedly commonly called. The specific area was in the Exuma Cays and he was at the furthest one north called Highbourne Cay (Highbourne Key). He told me that he had NO SERVICE from the GSM Cellular equipment there and he had power cycled and rebooted the equipment multiple times. He couldn't understand why there was a BATELCO Cellular Tower right there (This Island is know for having a Batelco Cellular Tower) and he could not get it to work. I was not sure either, so I set about to investigate it. To make a long story short that tower is for TDMA Cellular Service. So our GSM system was incompatible with it.

I already knew BATELCO and CINGULAR (his US Cellular Provider we had set up) had a "Roaming Agreement". When I called Cingular they told me that one thing important was that we hadn't requested "International Roaming/Calling". So I had them add that right away. After calling the customer again he had rebooted the unit several more times and still had NO SERVICE. Cingular had been unable to provide any more details on Roaming in the Bahamas than "The Bahamas" and wasn't able to look up individual (Islands?) Cities. Cingulars Web Site has a page http://www.cingular.com/customer_service/roaming_gen for International Roaming which is mildly helpful for the Bahamas here's the contents of the pop up window that you get:

International GSM Roaming

Bahamas

Time to investigate this from the Horses Mouth. I decided to call BATELCO and ask about this specific area and island (or cay [or key?]). Batelcos web site was made with Macromedia Flash (or equivalent?) so it's difficult to give you specific links. The main site is: http://www.btcbahamas.com/main_flash.html and I basically went right for the "Contact Us" link. I looked for Exuma and I called the first one, the George Town Office Tel. 242-336-2011. A nice lady answered and I asked about GSM access in the area Exumas/Highbourne Cay. She told me that the "Family Islands" are all TDMA. This was the first time that I had heard that name Family Islands so I did a bit more reading on that to make sure I knew what I was talking about. She also told me basically that GSM was only in Nassau and Freeport. When I re-visited their web site and looked at their GSM Coverage Map on there that sort of made sense. Their GSM Coverage Map only has two major Island/Areas on it: New Providence and Grand Bahamas.

New Providence is where the capitol of the Bahamas is as Nassau is there. There seems to be a lot of "Excellent" coverage all over that island. I guess that's not so surprising considering that is reportedly where the majority of Bahamians live.

Grand Bahamas is where Freeport is (Tourist/Cruise Ship/Free Trade "ground zero"?) and seems to have excellent coverage in Freeport and spotty elsewhere on that island. Again this info. is based upon Batelco's Coverage Map.

Batelnet http://www.batelnet.bs/ is a curious site ... it's supposedly part of Batelco as well, and seems to be the Internet Service Provider Site although it has these maps of areas of the Bahamas with Batelco Cellular Sites marked on them. I was about to suggest that they make the maps a bit clearer and add the Cellular Technology (TDMA/AMPS or GSM) and Frequency (800 Mhz for TDMA/AMPS and 1900 Mhz for GSM) to the maps, but then again they are part of Batelco not an independently run web site. But still it would be nice touch, both beneficial for their citizens and for visitors (roaming revenue is huge...). I couldn't find an email address on the site anyway.

So in summary...

You've got GSM Coverage on New Providence (it's basically cooking under lots of GSM coverage)

Grand Bahamas (seems to be more of a simmering under GSM coverage. But you could probably fit New Providence into Grand Bahamas so those maps on Batelco are not-to-scale.)

And TDMA on some of the other islands. If anyone wants to elaborate more on the TDMA coverage (other than the towers on the maps on the Batelnet.bs site) feel free to drop me a line. The Bahamas outlying areas (non-New Providence/Grand Bahamas)  is IS-136 (IS/136) Digital TDMA. Using the Telular line of equipment the SX4e would work on this. Telular doesn't have a dual GSM + TDMA unit all in one box. That (if it existed) would be a GAIT device.

This is from Cingular's Web Site: http://www.cingular.com/shop/roaming/roaming_TDMA_B regarding TDMA roaming. The Bahamas is included.



Some additional references:

Cell Phones Coverage in the Bahamas Sorry, no coverage map at this time (That's what the page says)

Q&A TDMA ... What is TDMA?

Cellular Networking Perspectives Covers The “AMPS” Family of Wireless Standards    TDMA Digital Cellular and PCS

Worldwide Subscribers (chart) by Technology (Dec 2004) I don't think we made a mistake in chosing GSM.

GAIT to Open GSM-TDMA Door (GAIT = GSM ANSI Interoperability Team) [It will be nice if the Bahamas - Batelco - will be opening that "door" to GSM in the other Non-Newprovidence/Grand Bahamas areas]
GSM/ANSI-136 Interoperability Team (GAIT) http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200201/msg00153.html

Interesting GPRS (Internet) Data note (note: "many Caribbean locations") from Cingulars web site:
http://www.cingularwireless.com/sbusiness/data_connect
Nationwide coverage.
No domestic data roaming charges
Our GPRS network is now the largest wireless data network in America, with the most cell sites and the most spectrum of any U.S. wireless carrier. Plus, with our Data Connect plans, you'll never pay EDGE/GPRS data roaming charges within the U.S. –coast to coast– and many Caribbean locations.**

**Antigua, Barbados, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent.

Network Detection (GSM):
GSM networks broadcast their presence, so your phone will display the name of a local GSM carrier when turned on. If you get a message to the effect of "No network detected", you probably need to manually set your handset to switch to a foreign GSM band. Most GSM carriers in North America use 1900 MHz, while those in other parts of the world use 900/1800 MHz. To change your GSM band, consult your phone manual under "Network". * BTC (Batelco) "Cybercell" uses North American standard of 1900 Mhz for its GSM Network.

TIA/EIA-136 TDMA Digital Cellular with Digital Control Channel

An enhancement to IS-54 TDMA that includes a more advanced control channel (known as the digital control channel (DCCH), to distinguish it from the 'analog' control channel, which although less sophisticated, is still digital!). The latest version being developed is ANSI standard TIA/EIA-136 Revision C.

3G Americas - Technology Center

* Note: This information could be useful for other parts of the Carribean (e.g. St. Maarten) and other parts of the world. If there's an interest I would be willing to post cellular information about other areas upon request. If the information is sufficient I'd also be willing to post seperate articles. If you have any valuable cellular information, especially personal experiences, please contact me by email: a_spicer(at)bellsouth.net. Thank You.

An interesting link about Carribean Cellular is HERE  also BVI Roaming (aka BoatPhone) is HERE  PARC International Roaming Database (interactive map) is HERE. BellSouth International Wireless (BSI-WS) became Illuminet Wireless Services and then became Verisign Telecommunications Services as is sort of told HERE and HERE. Verisign currently operates the Illuminet/Verisign Pan-American Roaming Consortium (PARC).