Internet in Guadeloupe and our electronic bloopers

Today I won’t show you any beautiful photos. Instead, we will talk about one of the most essential aspects of modern society, even in the Caribbean. Let’s check out how the Internet in Guadeloupe works.

And don’t say that it is not important. Posting photos on Instagram, checking the opening hours of a museum, writing this post for you or looking for the embassy phone number in case of an emergency – all these requires smartphone or laptop and at least mediocre signal.

So take a look at some tips about the Internet in Guadeloupe and Martinique and make some laugh from all of our electronic bloopers during two months spent in the Caribbean.

Read more: The Ultimate Travel Guide to Guadeloupe.

Internet in Guadeloupe – local Internet conditions

If you worried if the quality of the Internet in Guadeloupe will be sufficient for your work, you can already take a breath. This island, both with Martinique, is a part of France so it is well-developed and some local communes are even supported by the optical fiber.

If you are coming to Guadeloupe with the intention to work here with the Internet, as we did, the best solution is to find the accommodation equipped with WiFi. Thanks to this you can be sure to work with a stable Internet connection.

On French Antilles islands you can find few main telecommunication operators. The biggest ones are Orange Caraïbe, SFR and Digicel. If the WiFi in your rented apartment will not be enough for you or if you would like to have an Internet connection everywhere on the island, you can benefit their services and buy a needed Internet pack. But in my opinion, it is much more reasonable to find a home place with good quality WiFi.

Internet on the island – free WiFi spots

Luckily, in some places on the island, you can enjoy free WiFi spots. Lots of touristic places like bars or restaurants are equipped with free WiFi for clients. A great place to work could be also a local library. Most of them provide Internet access. So it is a nice option if you need to focus and work in silence.

Public locations in Guadeloupe have an opportunity to install a service which is called ZeeWifi. Thanks to this, in some touristic cities you can enjoy public WiFi. All you need to do is to register with the first connection. But then you can use it for sure in cities like Saint-François or Saine-Anne.

Roaming in French Antilles

Since Guadeloupe and Martinique forms part of the European Union, the roaming calls on those Caribbean islands work exactly the same than in rest of EU’s community. Today it means that calling home (Poland in our case) costs exactly the same as we were in our own country. The same concerns the Internet. Telecommunication operator usually has some gigabytes limit, but for us, it was enough to check the road on the online map or play Geocaching in the terrain.

But be sure to check with your own operator if your signal will be guaranteed on the islands. I had some adventures with mine, which you can read about below. Internet in Guadeloupe will be not the only thing that you will need.

Our electronic bloopers – warning and some tips

Steady Internet in Guadeloupe is not enough. For comfort work, you need also hardware. During two months spent in French Antilles, we had some adventures with our electronic stuff. Things like this simply happen, but we were very unfortunate if it comes to the amount of these problems. Most of them happened in Guadeloupe, so lucky for us we had a beautiful Plage de la Caravelle to chill on and calm down there.

Two pairs of hands to work, only one computer

Second day in Guadeloupe. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, we are ready to work on our lovely terrace in Sainte-Anne because at the end we are not only on vacation here. Mariusz tries to switch one of our computers and… nothing happens.

Our first thought was – the humidity. But hey it cannot be that bad. Actually, I expected that sooner or later that computer would retire because it was old enough, but not on the second day of our new digital nomads’ life.

We didn’t want to give up so we packed the laptop and a charger and went to Sainte-Anne in looking for a computer service. We found a place which was a mix of everything: printing shop, Internet café, office accessories shop, but also a computer service. Our first deeper interaction with a local was not the best. And probably it had some influence for next weeks in our contacts with people. But the guy that served our issue was simply mean. I think he had some problems with ethnics issues.

Nevermind, we left our computer there so he could check what happened. We came back after two days. He said he needed more time. So we came back again after a few days more. And he said that the power button is broken and he couldn’t do anything with it and that this computer was really badly built and he didn’t know how to put it back together. Yeah, you heard well. So we came back home with a computer which was even more broken than before. And this pleasure cost us 20 EUR.

Dissatisfied with the level of services, we went to the biggest city on the island – Pointe-à-Pitre. We hoped to find a solution there. We found another computer service, where the technician checked our laptop on the spot (and for free). And frankly said that it would be more worthy to buy a new computer than repair that one. Well, it happens.

Luckily, we still had our second computer.

What we have learned?

This experience came with two major lessons for us:

• maybe we should invest in a tablet and carry it with us so I can work with it on my online jobs;
• we surely improved our self-discipline skills – since we had only one computer per two of us we had no excuses to extend our daily time schedules.

Drowning smartphone

During our stay in Guadeloupe, we had a wonderful trip to Pointe des Chateaux. The path was beautiful, but we lost our way and needed to make a few kilometers more. In the end, we were so hungry of a pretty lagoon with blue water. And when we finally found it, we immediately jumped into the water.

Swimming trunks with pockets are not the wisest option. After 10 minutes of chilling in the water, Mariusz said “Oh look! There is an iPhone laying over there, under the water. Looks exactly like mine.“ And yes, it was his.

The battery went down and the phone switched off. When we just came to the nearest city we bought the packet of rice and put a phone inside. At home, we contacted the iPhone service and they advised us to find a place where we could clean the inside of the phone from salt to avoid corrosion. We needed to use an ultrasonic bath.

Unfortunately, any phone service in Guadeloupe could tell us directly if they had it or not. So, still remembering the adventure with the computer, we decided to wait with the repair until coming back to Poland and hoped it would work again.

And so, after two weeks in Guadeloupe, we had only one smartphone. It is annoying to switch all the time between Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, and Messanger accounts, but we must get used to it.

Lesson learned: always check your pockets and always carry your phone in a waterproof pouch when you’re near to water.

Comment from a reader: if your phone would ever fall down into the water, putting it in rice is maybe popular, but DO NOT RECOMMEND. We didn’t know about it before, that’s why we used this common practice. But here is what you should do: switch off your electronic device (in a forced way if needed) and put it in a hermetic container or immerse in distilled water until it can be delivered to proper service. Otherwise, you could only speed up the corrosion.

Your phone number is more important than you thought

Before coming to the Caribbean, I have read that my telecommunication operator sometimes has some problems with the reach on the islands. I underestimated it because we were sure that Mariusz’s operator (Orange) works fine here. And at the end, the connection to the Internet in Guadeloupe was much more important than phone calls in our case.

I forgot one important thing. Two-factor authentication. I have this service activated in my bank accounts, Revolt application and Facebook page of my business. To get access to all of them, I need to confirm my identity with an SMS code received to a phone number.

As you can guess, my phone number did not work. It is operated by Play, who claimed that their services are available in Guadeloupe. But apparently, they had some problems with it.

Luckily, after three rounds of online correspondence, the consultants of Play managed to fix the problem, and after two weeks I was able to connect with local net and get the access to my phone number again. But those two weeks were filled with a little stress about the access to my finances.

Broken charger cable

Luckily our last electronic adventure did not surprise us that much. We were prepared for this case. In the middle of our stay in Martinique, the cable of our only phone broke.

Fortunately, we were equipped with a spare cable. This is a thing that you should always remember to add to your packing list.

Read more: The complete Caribbean packing list + a printable PDF!

Forewarned is forearmed

I hope that information about the Internet in Guadeloupe and tales about our electronic adventures will help you during your own trip to the Caribbean. And I wish you that you will not share our fate. The best learning is to draw conclusions from someone’s mistakes.

So share this post with your friends before their travel!

Do you want to know more about Guadeloupe? Check out those articles:

• 9 awesome things to do in Guadeloupe
• Guadeloupe or Martinique: which island to choose for a fabulous vacation?
• The research of best hotels in Guadeloupe
• How to get around with public transport in the French Antilles?
• Car rental in Guadeloupe: everything you need to know

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