What you need to know about staying connected on St. Croix
Most people vacation on a tropical island to unplug and get away from the screens — who needs to look at a technicolor frame when you have a Caribbean Sea view right in front of you? But once you commit to moving to St. Croix either part- or full-time, the question of connectivity becomes much more important.
What is the best cell phone provider in St. Croix?
First off, the good news is that St. Croix is a U.S. Virgin Island, which means that the major stateside carriers of AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon should allow you to connect to the local towers without charging you roaming fees (assuming your plan includes free roaming). However, the only of the Big Three that has retained a Virgin Islands presence is T-Mobile, so if you plan to stay fulltime and require a local store where you can go in for service, that’s your only option for a national provider. That said, T-Mobile service can be spotty, especially on the East End, so enabling Wi-Fi calling (and collecting any and all Wi-Fi passwords that you can around island) can help ensure you don’t lose connection.
AT&T used to call St. Croix home, but several years ago, it sold its business to a provider called Liberty, based out of Puerto Rico. Liberty service operates on the old AT&T towers, which have better coverage all across the island. If you have stateside AT&T, you’ll be able to use those towers, no problem — and many people anecdotally report they prefer staying on their stateside plan than converting to one with Liberty, but that requires maintaining a stateside address. When Liberty first took over, the transition was bumpy, but several of our team members have Liberty and report no issues (and better coverage than those of us who use T-Mobile).
As for Verizon, stateside users report pretty good coverage using roaming on St. Croix, but Verizon itself does not have a local presence, so if you have any service issues or (yikes) your phone gets taken out by an errant wave, you will run into trouble getting help or a replacement, as Verizon won’t ship here.
Several local providers also offer prepaid service that uses the existing towers, including One Communications (formerly VIYA) and AirVoice VI. If you opt for one of these — and you travel stateside with any frequency — you’ll want to ensure you buy a plan that includes service off-island.
What’s the best internet provider on St. Croix?
For all intents and purposes, there are three options when it comes to home internet service in St. Croix. Liberty and One Communications offer internet as well as TV and home phone service, but your choice between those may come down to which one already serves your home or neighborhood.
The biggest drawback of either is that if there is a WAPA electrical outage, the internet service may also be affected. Since its launch, a lot of Crucians have made the switch to Starlink, which operates off satellites, so as long as they have power (either solar or generator), they should be online.
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