About a month out from our move I began communicating with our landlord about having Telem (internet) in place *when we got here*. Trying to be proactive, I was told by the building owner and our manager that, “it shouldn’t be a problem”. Our manager assured us everything was being arranged. So, my surprise factor was high when we got here and nothing had happened to assure Telem was in place. We were told that a Scarlet router was in place and we did have internet. Scarlet is another internet company on the island, whose bandwidth and speeds leave something to be desired. We were advised that one of our neighbors (who had already been waiting 3 weeks) was to get hers installed on Tuesday, October 2, and hopefully he could do ours at the same time. “All we had to do was go to Telem and pay”. By now I’m certain that the locals reading this are hysterical 😆. Recall, the “Telem guy was off the island until Monday”, 2 days ago. Apparently, there is only 1 Telem install guy for the entire Dutch side? 😐 Upon arrival at Telem on Monday we were advised that, no, it “doesn’t work that way, you fill out the application and ‘get on the list’ for install.” I stated that our manager advised that he could just get it while he was at our apartment complex, since he was going to be there anyway. Nope. It doesn’t work that way. K, then. Anyway, yesterday around 3:30 our manager messaged us to let us know that the propane is now hooked up and ready to use. Fantastic! Any word from Telem? No, haven’t heard from them 😐. The woman already waiting 3 weeks won’t get hers today and neither will you. Great. Understand that Andy MUST have internet to work and oh by the way, Scarlet has already gone out once in the 4 days we’ve been here 😂. Not that Telem doesn’t have outages too, they just have better speeds than Scarlet for what Andy needs.
So….many locals have already warned us, we’ll be lucky to have Telem by Christmas. In this instance, attempting to be proactive and arrange this before we arrived was futile. It was enormously frustrating for about 24 hours. Now, I think I’m settling into the “we aren’t in Kansas anymore” mindset and am coming to truly understand the meaning of “island time” in the very literal sense. In the end, we start every day with the view in this pic, we are about 7 minutes away from my favorite beach on the island (traffic willing), short of the Telem situation, everything else has fallen into line, and we DO have internet, it’s just not optimal. If it goes out, there are businesses with internet less than 3 minutes from the apartment. So if the biggest issue we have is that Telem may be our Christmas present, overall, we are doing very well indeed. 
St. Maarten Move 
Christmas in March: This one I can relate to, as I think most people can! The biggest difference is that we were told we would have to sign up, PAY, and wait….and if we were not present when they arrived to install, we went back to the bottom of the list. We figured Christmas would be lucky timing for install sine they were tell us around 6 months. We, too got a “Scarlet” — different name when we contracted, but changed shortly after. It was not great, but it worked most of the time. We also would go to restaurants and other places where we could use wifi and a better connection. BUT keep the faith. Our Christmas install actually totally surprised us when a fantastic young man from Holland (on contract to help Telem catch up on backlog after Irma) called in March and showed up minutes later when we least expected. Thank goodness we were home! He did a fantastic job. Yes, Amy, it does go out, but most of the outages are just the router, so a reset works pretty quickly. We have been advised to add a UPS with a battery to the incoming outlet and have it on order now for our December stay. That will supposedly stop some of the router “burping.”
While we fretted about poor internet, others told us that if the stars align, you can hope to get your broadband cable sooner rather than later. In the meantime, you know the rule — “donworry!” (PS Our building is total concrete–interior as well as exterior, we did add “boosters” to the router because as often happens, the cable input into the house and location of the router is in the living room and most computing is done 3 8″ concrete walls away. Our Dutch installer enthusiastically supported that plan.) The whole system is currently working great. Blue Point has been a pretty good resource for products and supplies (or with enough time, ordered from the US and shipped by sea).
‘Hope you get a nice “early” Christmas surprise!
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Andy got the UPS on Monday, lol! An IT guy by trade, he knew that was a must. He could probably also hook up the internet if Telem would let him lol!
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