myTobago – your questions, review and comment about Tobago

Dear All,

We have just returned from Tobago and I will be posting a few reviews in various sections.

One thing I had found to be unanimous in all of sources of information including this forum before we went was that UK mobile phones don't work over there.

I have a tri-band phone and subscribe to Orange. It worked fine in both Trinidad and Tobago attaching itself to the TSTT network.

Hey Charles

Thanks for that, I was gonna get a loan phone from TSTT but I will just buy a orange pay & Go sim if thats the case. Any idea of cost of calls etc or you not had your bill yet !!!

Top info

Calls will probably be fairly expensive. This is cretainly the case in other european countries.

My contract is a monthly one. Can't speak for Pay as you go. Best to get advice on this one.

Hi Charles

Thanks for the update. On 25th March, TSTT launched their GSM/GPRS service, so it's only been since then that mobile phones (cellphones) operating at the 1800MHz frequency have been able to access the service.

Sadly, TSTT are not a company that believe in Customer Relations and so most emails and enquiries go unanswered. Consequently I have been unable to establish the status of roaming agreements with overseas telecoms companies such as Orange. Consequently, TSTT could charge you the earth. It would therefore be really appreciated if you could let us know whether the charges appear to be reasonable as soon as you get your next Orange bill - this will be really valuable information to everyone, including myself.

In view of Charles report, I decided to speak to my own mobile provider O2 (or whatever other silly name they now go by).

I can confirm that O2 now DO have a roaming agreement with TSTT since the launch of the new TSTT service mentioned above.

O2 advise me that the most ‘economical’ solution on my monthly billing account is to subscribe to their ‘International Traveller Service’ (ITS) plan which costs £2.99 per month. There’s no minimum period, so apparently I can simply take the plan out for the two weeks abroad, or whatever. However, being on the ITS reduces the cost of calls considerably.

The rates they quoted me under this service are (standard non-ITS rates in brackets):

• Calling Back to UK - £1.20 (£1.70) per minute
  Receiving Calls - £0.99 (£1.65) per minute
  Calls within T&T - £0.68 (£0.77) per minute
  Text Calls - £0.40 per text

Sorry that I haven't got the time to check with Vodaphone/Orange, but I think we can safely assume that visitors with tri-band phones and accounts with any of the major telecoms providers WILL now be able to use their own phone on Tobago (if you are prepared to stomach the charges. Jill could bankrupt me just saying ‘Hello’)!

Hi

yet again steve you have gone above and beyond the call of duty.

I knew you put a lot of time and effort into this site all for the love of Tobago, but over the last couple of weeks some of the posts you have put up have made me realise how deep your love for Tobago is !!

I for one will keep my promise and give full reports when I return in December as a big thank you for your input and hopefully as a help to others the same way this site is helping me plan my visit.

Thanks for all the info you and all the members supply and its such a shame that most of the people in Tobago dont seem to have a similar enthuseasm? for Tobago that you do. It doesnt take 2 mins to reply to an email. Is it the laid back way of life there I wonder.?

Hi
I can also confirm that whilst we were in Tobago two weeks ago not us but two fellow guests at the hotel were able to use their Orange mobiles to ring the UK with no problems.
Angela

Sorry folks just read thru my last post and what I meant to say was
"that some of the tobagan business's dont respond to emails that well"

Sorry if I offended Tobagans it was not meant to be a generalisation.

Hi everybody.

A bit more on mobiles.
I have a fairly old pay as you go sagem mobile, connected to Vodaphone.
To my amazement it connected to TSTT on our recent visit to Tobago. (back yesterday)
I sent a text message to my son who was in Tobago with us, just to test it. It cost 99p.
So expensive, but useful for emergencies. I did not test voice communication.

Regards to all.

Hi,

We managed to connect using our Vodafone mobile in early June.

Unfortunately the bill that we've just received is for the period immediately before our one call that we made (5 - 10 minutes within Tobago) but I'll advise the costs when it does arrive.

Cheers...

Hi All,

I just got my Orange bill in and they haven't charged me for any of the local calls I made, they also haven't charged me for any of the international calls I made!

All I have been charged for is the the incoming calls from the UK which were charged at 68 pence per minute.

Will let you know if they backdate anything they haven't charged me for.

Hi Charles

Fingers crossed!!!

Seriously though, I suspect that this is simply TSTT showing their usual efficiency. I thought BT was bad, but TSTT are in a league of their own. Try contacting their Customer Service department - either by phone or email - and you'll know what I mean.

I've monitored emails from Tobago - the average is 6 hours but I've had three that have taken 5 and 6 days - slower than airmail. This is a good point for readers, actually. If you email anyone in Tobago, do not worry if the reply takes longer than you might expect. As I say, the average email delay is six hours - and that has absolutely nothing to do with time zone differences. In practise, its difficult to exchange more than one email per day with businesses over there. Some businesses on Tobago even use North American and British email post boxes to collect incoming mail to get round the problem, but for ISP security reasons, are forced to use their local TSTT dial-up for outgoing mail, so they still get caught.