Meaning to Life | Exotic Caribbean

Posts Tagged ‘Orange’

Monday, March 28, 2005
In the years we have been in Boca Chica we have seen the same explosion in telephonic communication just as anywhere else in the world. Most eye-catching of all is the now entirely universal use of mobile cellular phones. A short résumé of the cellular options lists four distinct companies offering services. They are, probably in order of customer base, Verizon, Tricom, Orange and Centennial.
A casual ‘Playa Vista survey’ reveals that any important differences among the four options can be summed up rather like this:
The service of each fully covers the largest center of population in the country, namely that of the municipality of Santo Domingo also conveniently encompassing Boca Chica. Orange would appear to be the most economic with Centennial too offering some very competitive deals. However, Verizon, being the longest established, has wider coverage in the country as a whole. People visiting from overseas and already subscribers to Orange’s system can even conveniently arrange to have their phone activate the moment they walk off the airplane in the Dominican Republic with a warm and welcoming “bienvenido to the DR” message. This roaming facility is also an option for visitors with Centennial and Verizon phones but such a convenience is generally considered to be far more expensive than simply activating a completely new account on arrival.
The increase in internet usage is less directly visible but still countable in the sense that there are now quite a number of sites dotted around town where visitors can drop in to maintain their usual contact with the outside world and read the all important DR1 Blogs section. The range of services offered is now far beyond the single dial-up speed through the single national operator Codetel (renamed Verizon last year) that we encountered when we first arrived more than seven years ago. Cable TV companies too, though mainly restricted to Santo Domingo and Santiago, have even joined in offering internet services. Diversification has also come to landlines because the same single national operator was joined by Tricom firstly in 1992 with long distance services and then later on with full telephone services. This and the entrance of other cellular companies to the market were made possible by new government legislation specifically to encourage competition beginning in the 1990s.
So… what has all this cellular talk to do with Playa Vista and Boca Chica you might ask?
The answer is that the motivation to report on the subject as a whole has come as a result of our own need to increase our telecommunications network and install an additional line affording a speedier connection to the WWW. But… more about that patience-trying Caribbean adventure next time. Meanwhile you may or may not like to check in the archives to see how Verizon (in those days Codetel) treated us the last time we had purpose to write about them well over a year ago in the blog posted on August 31, 2003.
So until next time’s speedy delivery… a quick over and out!