Bahamas Communication circa 2017

I've done posts on communication and connectivity in the Bahamas before, but when we arrived here this year things were so different that it warrants a new review of it here. There is still a lot of good information in the old posts and you can read them here and here.

First of all, communication needs vary from cruiser to cruiser. Since we have three daughters and nine grandchildren, communication and connectivity are the key to the success of our cruising. No data to see grandbaby pics and read about the latest escapades, and this cruising life will be short-lived. We also enjoy writing in this blog and posting photos, all of which take data.

Second, our connectivity is almost 100% through our phones. We are rarely where there is wifi and when there is wifi it is rarely fast enough to do even the most simple browsing tasks. We don't have an extender because we're finding that most wifi routers are password protected now and the ones that aren't are so abysmally slow that they're no worth using. In the Bahamas, restaurants and marinas frequently change their passwords daily to prevent someone coming in once and then using the password while sitting at anchor the rest of the week.

Third, we have Verizon (and have had it since our very first cell phone), and before anybody speaks up about the new unlimited plan that they're offering to compete with T-Mobile, read the fine print. We use almost 100% of our data with our phones tethered to our laptops or our iPads. The unlimited plan only allows 10GB tethered at full speed. After the 10GB, they throttle down the speed to 3G or less. It's right in the program description. Our current plan has enough data and it's full speed the whole amount so we're keeping it. That being said, Verizon is useless to us in the Bahamas because of the cost. You can make and receive texts at a "reasonable" cost, $.50 to send and $.05 to receive. Calls are $1.95 per minute, obviously only for emergencies. Data is $10 per day billed only for the days you use it, up to the limit of your data plan. Again, ridiculous and only for emergencies.

Now that we have the basics out of the way, here's what we found when we got here this year. BTC used to have data cards that you could buy, $30 per 5GB, about the same as US prices. Once a year in late spring they would run a 50% off sale and you could buy enough for your next season. As long as you didn't activate them they would last a year, then once activated they would last 30 days. Not any more. Now there are no more data cards. You buy a sim card, and you buy however many phone minutes you want and a data plan, and you activate it on your phone. $30 for 4GB that lasts 30 days. The 7GB special that they were running is gone now, just in case you heard about that one. Much simpler and less expensive for them in administrative costs, but more expensive for cruisers. When you head to the BTC store, be sure to have your phone with you as well as any special tools required to remove the sim card. You will also need a photo ID and cash. They don't take credit cards in most of the outlying stores. You might also want to bring along a case for your US sim so you don't lose it. Turn your phone off, change the sim, and restart. Next, dial *205#, choose #2 (you have to type it in), choose your data plan, and select #1 to complete the transaction. Be aware that applying a new data plan will delete any old one so don't do this until your data is gone. BTC data does not roll over. The restart your phone. Depending on what phone you have, you might have to go into the settings and change the APN. On my Droid Turbo, it's Settings-More-Cellular Networks-Access Point Names then + to add a new one. The BTC APN s internet.btcbahamas.com. Some phones do this automatically. A word to the wise - be sure to set your apps to never update unless you manually update them. If you choose to update only on wifi and then you use your phone to tether to your tablet, it will perceive that it's on wifi and update. You can lose a ton of data this way. We also get in the habit of turning off the mobile data every time we're done on the internet so that nothing updates while we're not online.

There is a new player in town, Aliv, which offers some different plans, including multiple affordable options that have a phone, minutes, and data. They have towers in all the major cities in the Bahamas, but we weren't sure about their coverage in the outlying areas where BTC is very good so we opted to stay with BTC. The one advantage to the Aliv plan is that the data rolls over if you don't use it.

One of the best new advances for cruiser communication is mrsimcard.com. You can go there and order your sim card and plan while you're still in the States. When you cross into the Bahamas and are in range of a tower, you just change out your sim and you're done. It costs a little extra but it's so completely worth it. Keep in mind that there is no BTC store in West End, and the ones in Foxtown and Green Turtle are only open one day a week. Most of the stores except for Marsh Harbor have very limited hours of operation. I didn't get around to doing that this year but I will never come here again without doing it. Sim cards only last 90 days without use before the number reverts back to the company so you will be buying a new one every season most likely. By the way, mrsimcard.com offers a discount for Active Captain members so join today if you haven't already.

It's worth mentioning here that the Delorme InReach has been a very valuable communication tool for us. The Delorme has two-way texting capability, made easier by the Earthmate app on your phone. It syncs with your contacts so you can send 160 character texts via satellite. There are unlimited preset messages included in the base $24.95 per month fee, and 40 other messages per month. Keep in mind that both outgoing and incoming count against that total so be sure that anyone you send to realizes to keep it to a limited amount. On the presets, you have three preset messages that you can customize both in content and to whom you send them to. We have one saying that we're starting a trip, one saying that all is well, and one saying that we've arrived. They include a link to a map so that the recipients can see where we are. You can also post to Facebook with the messages.

Last, but not least, don't forget the old faithful snail mail. Post cards are plentiful and cheap in the Bahamas and your cubicle-bound friends will appreciate (or hate) you for sending them something to brighten up their walls. Snail mail doesn't quite capture the slowness of it though. A couple years ago I sent post cards to my grandkids and they arrived in St. Louis two weeks after we had arrived back in the States. I believe it took them four weeks to get there.

I will also mention a cruiser friend here who has lots of good ideas on the data savings while traveling. The folks on S/V Odin have a very helpful blog full of practical info. Do a search on their tag "Cheapskates on the Move" and it will bring up the posts, one of which is some exciting news about Netflix.

If you have any other ideas or experiences about communications and connectivity in the Bahamas, please post them in the comments. It's an ever-changing subject so all input is helpful.

Revisiting Communications

A while back one of our readers commented on one of our cruising cost posts about our Verizon bill and he wondered if we might not be able to get that bill down some by using some other carriers and plans. The bill bugs me every month I pay it because it is one of our biggest expenses, but we were under contract and rather than buy it out we decided to stick it out. As the end of the contract neared, I decided to do some exploring.


First of all, it's important to note that our cell phones are almost 100% of our internet accessibility. We do spend a lot of time on the internet for various reasons. We don't watch TV, we're voracious readers, we're working on two book projects and need the research time and we keep up with our family and friends through various blogs and Facebook. A lot of cruisers are happy to spend hours inside Starbucks waiting an eternity for their Facebook feed to load because whatever marina they're in has wifi that is even slower. I'm not exactly sure how it's possible because, after completing my children's book recently and needing to upload the (very large) file, I traipsed the ¾ mile to Starbucks and sat there for 4 hours waiting for it to upload. It cost me a total of $18 in coffee between Tim and I to get it done. After receiving the proof a few days later and realizing I had some corrections to make, I decided that paying Verizon $10 for a gig overage on my data was cheaper than going to Starbucks and I wouldn't have to traipse the ¾ mile in the rain on top of it. Much to my surprise, the same size file uploaded through my hotspot in minutes.

We've looked at purchasing one of the many wifi extenders on the market, but the average price of $300 has been just out of our reach due to the many other non-discretionary expenditures raging through my checkbook. If it worked, though, it would be paid for in a couple months' Verizon bills so it had to be considered. To assess the benefit, I looked for wifi signals in the towns we visited and talked to cruisers. To be quite honest, in the year since we left to go cruising I can't honestly say it would have helped us much. There are almost no wifi signals anymore that are not password protected. Free, yes, but most still require a password. If you're going to be in an anchorage for a long time I guess you could patronize the provider once to get the password and then use it from the anchorage with the extender. A word of caution - this will not work in the Bahamas because the restaurants and bars change their password frequently (some every day) just to prevent cruisers from doing this. Even with a password in hand, speed is still an issue. We gauge the acceptability of wifi speed by whether or not Tim can stream his MotoGP videos. Some people have news habits, some have movie habits, Tim has a motorcycle racing habit. While we were in Ft. Lauderdale at Cooley's Landing, the dial up wifi at the marina was unable to get it done. Tim had to make the weekly trek to Publix to watch the races while I shopped. When we moved to Middle River in Ft. Lauderdale he had to go to the Galleria for the privilege. Free wifi has just not been able to meet our internet needs.


When my youngest daughter bought a new phone we asked if we could have the old one to replace Tim's aging Droid X. After receiving it, it turned out it wouldn't work on Verizon since it was originally a T-Mobile phone, so we decided to do a two-month test by putting the phone on Straight Talk, Walmart's version of prepaid phone and data service. We had two months left on our Verizon contract and it would be the perfect opportunity to test the speed and access against his Droid while it was still also on the plan. In the process of researching plans, we discovered several things we didn't know before. It turns out that all unlimited data plans have some sort of throttling in place and are truly not unlimited. If you don't know what throttling is, here's the gist of it. If you happen to have a 4G unlimited plan with Straight Talk, after you cross the 3 gig data use point they will throttle your speed back to 2G for the remainder of your month. In our case that was at least half of every month. We researched Verizon and it turns out that their throttling is slightly different. It's still throttling, but they call it "Optimizing". On Verizon's unlimited plan there is a difference between 3G and 4G phones. If you're on an old 3G phone and you're in the top 5% of data users (they define this as anyone who uses more than 4.75gb in a month), and you're on a cell tower that has high demand, they throttle you back to allow everyone else a fair amount of data. Once the demand is reduced, like 2am for instance, then they put your speed back up. We had been noticing this with Tim's phone for some time. I'm on a 4G hotspot plan with Verizon so I was not experiencing this. Why do they do this? Because a lot of the 3G phones are grandfathered into the unlimited data plans that Verizon used to offer, Tim's included, and they are trying to force them into buying a new 4G phone, thereby losing the grandfathered status of unlimited data.

In the middle of all of this research, someone was kind enough to post a link on Facebook to a news release that AT&T was going to offer double data plans at the same price for a limited time. I called AT&T and had a very long discussion with a very polite and well-informed customer service rep. Neither of our phones would work on the AT&T network and the combined cost of new phones and a new plan to switch to AT&T just didn't make any fiscal sense. So I did what all good consumers do, and took the offer to Verizon. It turns out that Verizon, under great duress, was quietly matching the AT&T offer with some small revisions. I was able to get double the data that we currently were getting for the same monthly bill. So while it didn't reduce the bill, at least for the moment we can gleefully consume internet time without constantly staring at the data use graph.

For some people, cruising is about completely detaching themselves from the grid. No phone, or at least only emergency plans, no TV, no internet. For us, the internet is essential. It makes it possible for us to write and be published, it makes it possible to stay in touch with our kids and grand-kids, it makes it possible to manage our rental, and to keep up our blog. You might be able to cruise with a phone bill that is much smaller than ours, but for at least the time being I'm just going to have to deal with paying ours every month.

Exploring Bahamas Communication

Long Disclaimer: Communication and connectivity while cruising the Bahamas is a challenge at best. Before we left to come over here I spent a lot of time trying to collect information, and while I was able to get a good bit from the Women Who Sail Facebook group through various posts, there was some information not included so I decided to do this post on our own experience. Your communication and connectivity needs might be different so please understand that this is what works for us and while you might glean some useful information from it, it also largely depends on who your US carrier is. We have Verizon, and before you groan, we have been with Verizon since the very first cell phones came out and have never had a complaint. We have found their tech and customer service to be of the highest quality, although to be fair, we have attained VIP status on their customer list since we've been with them continuously for so long so we tend to get a little more prioritized service. While I have had varying degrees of satisfaction with certain physical equipment, that's a manufacturer issue. The Verizon network has been good for us with excellent coverage and speed. As a result, the information in this post is geared toward having a Verizon account and I have no idea how that differs with any other carrier. If you do have first hand information, please comment.

Being "off the grid" is a highly modified term in our cruising dictionary. If we didn't have 7-soon-to-be-8 grand kids back in the States it would be a non-issue, but since we do, we like our connectivity. What can I say? If I'm less of a cruiser for that, then so be it, but the expression on my grandson's face when we Skyped with him while going under a bridge on the ICW ("Dema you're going to hit the bridge!! No way are you going to fit!") was worth it all. So the communications challenges here in the Bahamas are a very personal thing to this grandma. After two months we've sort of made peace with it and here's what we found out.

If you're going to cruise the Bahamas with Verizon and you want internet, the first thing to find out is whether your phone is 1) global ready and 2) if it's unlocked and 3) if it has a sim card. My Droid Razr Maxx HD was all of those three, butTim's Droid X was not so we've been using only my phone. If you have a global ready phone that's not unlocked, you can get an unlock code from a lot of websites that are out there expressly for that purpose. Buyer beware though: a lot of times they'll sell you a code for a phone that can't be unlocked, and Verizon has very few unlocked phones. Needless to say, there's no refund. If you have a Verizon locked phone, the chance of getting it unlocked is pretty slim. If you don't have a global ready phone at all, you either have to get a new one via the internet or wait till you get to the Bahamas and buy one from them. Their prices are quite reasonable so I would recommend the latter. I saw a good selection of smart phones for under $100 outright in their display case.

Given that we had a global ready phone that was already unlocked, we were able to move onto the next choice in our journey toward connectivity which was the choice of 1) just continuing to pay our normal bill while we were gone even though we weren't using it 2) suspending the account for the two months and continuing to pay or 3) suspending the account for the two months and not receiving a bill to pay. We chose to just continue to pay our normal bill because I still have a contract on my phone and it would have extended two months if we had suspended the account without payment. We were also worried about Tim's phone if we suspended the account because he's grandfathered into the unlimited internet and we didn't want to do anything that would jeopardize that. Verizon assured us that it would not affect it, but I lost my grandfathered unlimited over a communication snafu and we didn't want to risk that.

We used my phone even 30 miles offshore sometimes for weather. Verizon's coverage is pretty amazing. We did have a dead zone between that offshore limit and acquiring a sim in the Bahamas but as soon as we got to a place that had a Batelco, we bought a Bahamian sim card. If you see a Batelco tower on an island, there is an office either directly beneath it or very near by. All of them have sims, but if your phone takes the micro sim (which mine does) it will have to be cut. The Bahamian cards are the SD size. Most but not all Batelco offices in the Bahamas have the sim card cutter which is like a hole punch, but the one we went to in Green Turtle Cay did not. You can get a template to cut the card online and it might be a good idea to print one out before you leave just in case. I had to cut mine, which I did with a good, sharp pair of scissors and then sanded the edges to fit with an emery board. It's not difficult but you do need to be precise and if you screw it up you're out the $15 for the sim. Be sure to keep your original Verizon sim in a safe place free of moisture so you can reinstall it when approaching the US. With your sim card you will be assigned a Bahamian phone number which will be yours as long as you have that sim. Once you get the sim installed, you're on to the next step.

This next step was the most confusing part of the whole Bahamian phone/internet thing for me because no one explained it to me and I had to figure it out by trial and error. If you want actual phone voice capabilities other than Skype, you have to buy a separate card for phone time. I bought just a $5.00 card so if I wanted to call a Bahamian business I could. We sometimes call ahead for mooring reservations. If you're calling in the Bahamas to another Bahama number the prices are reasonable, I believe it's $.27 per minute but don't be tempted to use this for calls to the US because it's expensive, I think somewhere around $.47 a minute. It's less than using Verizon ($2.00 per minute for calls originating from the Bahamas), but it's still better to use Skype for voice calls. I found that I can buy a monthly subscription on Skype for voice calls to land line phones and mobiles for $6.99 per month. Since my daughters are most easily reached on land line or mobile phones, I did that. One caveat: I did find that I can't call them on Skype when I'm using my phone as a USB internet tether. I have to do it on wifi. I can use Skype to do voice calls to other Skype users or video calls to other Skype users while tethered, just not voice to landlines or mobiles. As a point of information, we use the PdaNet Android app for tethering because it works with Tim's unlimited data plan. It works really well, well enough in fact to stream Netflix.

Another feature we recently discovered works well here in the Bahamas, once you get your internet card up and working, is the Facebook Messenger app. You can text through it as well as voice calls if the person on the other end is also on a smart phone with the app installed. Just look for the small phone icon in the window where you write the message. If it's there then you can call that person. The quality is good and it's free the same as Skype.

For internet access on your phone, you have to purchase separate internet datacards at a Batelco office or a designated outlet, of which there are many all over the islands. A lot of grocery store and gift shops and even some restaurants have them. Just look for the ever so visible “Top it Up” banners at your favorite retailer. During the season they cost $30 for 2 gigs, a price that is even lower than a lot of data in the US. In March we got them for $20 for 2 gigs, and now in April they're $15 for 2 gigs. As long as you don't activate them, they last till the expiration date printed on the cards. As an example, our cards purchased in April of 2014 had a July 2015 expiration date on them. Stock up at the end of the season, and bring them back the following year. If you register on their site for an account you can also top up online, although the two times I tried to do it the system was down and the outlets for the cards are so ubiquitous that it's really not difficult to buy another card.

Activating these cards is a two-fold process. You first must apply them to your account by dialing *202# and hitting send and following the menu. You will have to choose the Data option and then input your pin number which is under a scratch-off strip on the back of the data card you're activating. After you finish that portion, it will show you have $30 applied to your account and they will send you a text to let you know it was successful. OK here's the part no one seemed to find necessary to mention. After you have applied the $30 to your account, that total amount is good for 90 days, but you must put all or part of that into your “data wallet” to actually use it. You dial *205# and follow the menu to apply however much of the 2 gigs you want to use. Whatever you apply is only good for 30 days so if you're nearing the end of your time in the Bahamas but you're going to be back within the 90 days, you might only want to activate 1 gig or even less. Once it's in your data wallet it expires within 30 days. You can dial *201# to check your balance, but it will only show the balance on your account that you haven't applied to your data wallet, not the balance of what you've already put in your data wallet. They will send you a text to let you know when you have used 75% of your data in your data wallet, but they will not tell you when you've used it all so you have to keep track of it in your settings on your phone. If you run out of data but have phone time in your account, you'll see a strong phone signal in your status bar but no internet icon. That's one way you can know if you're out of data. Are you confused yet? Good because I was and I couldn't get a straight answer anywhere. If you have any trouble with your phone accepting the data balance (which I did), you may have to manually set your Mobile Network settings to Global and you may have to manually enter the Access Point Name which is internet.btcbahamas.com (which I did). You will also have to have the Mobile Data checked as on and roaming as off. If you need any help with this, find the nearest 8-year old or go to the nearest Batelco store and hope you get a good customer service rep.

In the beginning we were trying to find good wifi and were even paying mooring fees or going to restaurants and coffee shops and buying things just so we could be online. I generally find that the connectivity is at least as good and available on the Batelco card as it is on most wifi here, if not much faster. Most of the wifi in public places is slower than mud because there are so many people trying to use it at the same time. Here are a just a few of the wifi providers we used and our evaluation of them. Keep in mind that we don't have a wifi extender, but even without it we have rarely not been able to get online. There have been times we can't upoad a lot of pictures or video or Skype, but we were almost always able to get our emails and weather. The only main frustration was not being able to download new gribs on the iPads, but I understand if you can find someone to unlock your iPad you can get another Bahamian sim to put in there.
Marsh Harbour:

We found we had the fastest wifi at the Java Coffee Shop in Marsh Harbour, as well as the best quality, most reasonably priced coffee anywhere. The wifi there is fast enough that at one point we had 3 people on Skype at the same time with no problem. The owner, Kim, is very agreeable and supportive of cruisers.

We tried the internet at the Lofty Fig, at Snappa's Bar, at Mangoe's, all of which were too slow to be useful.

Batelco was good in the harbor as long as you were in the cockpit. With an extender and router it would have been fine inside the boat.
Treasure Cay:
We tried the internet at the resort at the main dinghy dock and it was only fair strength when it came in at all, and it was “down” more than it was up. It was extremely frustrating until we discovered that the internet at La Florance Cafe and Bakery in the strip right by the dock was exceedingly fast and you could eat a cinnamon roll that feeds a family of 4 for $5 and tastes much better than Cinnabon. Florence also makes a fantastic sandwich that was big enough for us to split. She has shaded seating outside the cafe and small tables inside. She also sells the best ice cream of anywhere in the islands and the socio-political discussions with her husband, the Captain, are not to be missed. Connectivity in the islands is often a social event like this because everywhere you go to get wifi there are people sitting around engaging in something that the US has lost – the ability to have long, intelligent, non-threatening discussions about issues with people who have differing opinions.
Green Turtle Cay:
Batelco was OK in the harbour, but not great. You had to be out in the cockpit to use it.

Royal Harbour:
I was really surprised with the remoteness of this harbour that we got such a strong Batelco signal. I think maybe they had installed the tower for the development that was supposed to go in there and left the tower even though the development failed.
Spanish Wells:

You can get free wifi with no password at the smoothie shop on the main drag. The speed varies with the time of day and how many customers but it's almost always fast enough to Skype.

Batelco is very strong on the mooring field.Hatchet Bay, Eleuthera:Wifi at the Spot bar is very good and free. The bartender will put the password on your device for you. The only difficulty is that it's usually too loud to Skype unless you get there very early in the day.

Batelco is very strong in the bay.

The Long and Short of It:

It's a lot to digest, but for us the Batelco data cards are our primary source of online connectivity along with whatever free wifi we can come across at bars and restaurants. I find that I use the Facebook Messenger app the most, but that's because I tended to text in the US more than talk, and the Messenger texting is exactly like texting on Verizon in the States. It has a good, loud chime to notify you that a message has arrived, so it's easy to hear pretty much anywhere on the boat. It also allows attached pictures. Probably the biggest issue for us has been the lack of video capabilities. Video just uses too much data to indulge, and Tim is suffering because he can't watch his Moto GP races. We do miss the occasional Netflix movie on rainy days as well, but it just means we read more on our Kindles. The Kindles require wifi to download, but we just tend to download a bunch of books when we're on strong signal so that we have them later.

Hope this has been helpful. If you have any specific questions or experiences that are relevant, don't hesitate to post them here.