Greetings All.

My fiance and I have pretty much decided on moving to Bonaire sometime this summer. The only major concern for myself is access to high speed internet.

Note: I found a lot of good information at this thread:
http://www.oldbonairetalk.com/newsgroup/messages/36/169898.html?1115752597

We will be in a fairly good position financially and neither of us intend get jobs in Bonaire, however I have a very active client base in the U.S. and would like to be able to continue to work remotely. In order to do this I need to be able to have fairly stable high-speed internet connectivity primarily to the states.

What is the best solution for high-speed internet? I'm open to any ideas/experiences.

I've also read in these forums about electrical hurdles that you must jump through in order to protect sensitive equipment ie: computers, from fluctuations and surges. I assume this is something that CAN be handled with locally available expertise/equipment?

Is there an area on the island that is more "modern" and better suited to stable internet/electricity? If so, perhaps I should limit our house-hunting to that region. Or is it pretty much the same all over?

We have both fallen in love with Bonaire; If I can get both of these concerns taken care of, there will be nothing holding us back from the big move.

Thanks in advance,
Tim

Anyone have any info on this? I'd like to know as well. Also how fast is the high speed internet service? Can you easily send and receive large file sizes... say 100MB or more? Thanks. I've done a search but the info I've found is a bit outdated.
thanks.

Congratulations on the plans Tim...
interesting thread - I, too, look forward to hearing from the experts

If your equipment uses a DC brick, there shouldn't be a problem. If it uses AC power, then Budget Marine can set you up with a charger/inverter/battery setup that will render you immune to power variation (and act as a large UPS as well).

Internet access speed here is pretty much limited to 512K, and most of us have 128K or 256K.

100MB files are difficult to handle because of the extended upload/download times required for them. Assuming that you aren't talking illegal things like pirated movies, the best bet is to use an FTP server in the states to host the files, and let your clients pick them up from there. That way, you deal with the hassle, and your client gets rapid access to the data.

May I also suggest that if you are going to operate a business out of Bonaire, not only do you get the high speed internet, but you invest in the DSL through Telbo here (the phone system). The internet can go down pretty often (it was down in our neighborhood for about 8 hours the other day, and you can always use Telbo as a back up. I know a couple of businesses that do that down here. It really has been a life saver.

I had a terrible time Nov. and Dec. with Flamingo. I never found out the problem but I had no internet for a good part of 3 weeks. And now when it rains it goes out ...sigh...I rely soley on the internet for work and my child's home school program so it was not a happy time at my house.

Prior to this past problems, Flamingo has been great.

On a side note during the time I had no internet I was allowed to access their internet (not too convenient) and their customer support was most helpful while they tried to rectify the problem.

Thanks for the comments all.

I did a fair bit of researching and decided I should post what I decided to go with.

As staying connected is more important to me than actual speed, I decided that having multiple ISP's was going to be my best option, since all reports I received were that internet access on bonaire can be flaky at times. With that in mind I decided to use this product:
http://www.hotbrick.com/produto.asp?tipo=2&codPro=22 It is an inexpensive dual-wan router with load balancing connection redundancy. I have NOT been disappointed with it. It takes both of my internet connections and combines them to share the bandwidth and if one goes down, my connections stay up!

Technologies:
1. Cable Internet
http://www.flamingotv.com/isp.htm
Signing up for business internet account was enjoyable as they were more than happy to get my business. So far the connection has been surprising quick and reliable.

2. DSL
http://www.telbo.an/index.php?page_id=22&style_id=
I hear from people that the dsl over the phone lines is extremely flaky, lucky for me the house I bought already has the wireless dsl installed and the account has remained active thanks to my seller being very accomodating. I understand nobody else except existing accounts are allowed to get this installed. That is too bad because it has been extremely stable for me.

3. Satellite Internet -- I researched this option fully, thinking that having a satellite internet connection as part of my setup would be ideal; since I would not have to rely on any local providers. There were a fair number of providers willing to sell me the equipment and walk me through a self-install, sounds good, yes? WRONG, thanks to a tip from Jake, I contacted the Bureau of Telecommunication and Post (roughly the equivalent of the FCC in the N.A.) and was informed that having a satellite that was capable of UPLOADING data required a yearly license fee of approx: 24000 naf. Add that on top of the provider fees and you get an unreasonable cost. I understand there are a number of "pirate" installs around Bonaire and more power to them, but not something I wanted to do. This ruled out the satellite internet option for me.

4. EVDO (highspeed cellular internet), evidently this is available in curacao through mio (http://curacao.mio.an/3g/what_is_evdo.php) However, I was unable to find out if it was available on Bonaire, as repeated emails and phone calls to the company went unanswered. If this service ever becomes available on Bonaire it might make a nice secondary connection, as you can buy EVDO modems that will plug into a router. And the speed is fairly good.

If anybody comes across this post while searching for internet options in bonaire, feel free to contact me through the board.

Hi guys: We are currently living in Arizona and just bought a house on Bonaire. We just moved from town to the country which had electric but no phones and no cable tv service. So we went cellular for phone and satellite for internet. Most satellite internet connections are in the $90 - $100 per month
range. We googled the net and found one for about half that at $50 /month. It is Wildblue.net. You have to buy your modem and your dish from them for about $200, which is yours to keep (and move to Bonaire) then just pay the subscriber fee/month.
The downloads are very fast but the uploads are about 1/4 that speed. We have been using it for 6 months and are very pleased. We think it will work well in Bonaire. Something to think about anyway. Thanks Randy

It'll work well until it's confiscated. Satellite uplinks are illegal in the Netherlands Antilles.

I forgot to mention the back tax bill of 2000 guilders/month for every month you've lived on the island that you will be presented with when they do.

Why is it illegal? Everyone is griping about how bad the service is (read above comments) and sounds like it is all dial up. Sounds like you really need some improvements. Is it the fact that it is a private company not a netherlands connection that bothers them? The airways should belong to the people of the planet.
Thanks Randy

Protectionism. You will have to get used to it, here. There are regulations on self-generation of power, too.

We have service available up to 2 Mbps. It's just far more expensive than you are used to. I pay about $300/month for 512 kbps.

Did I read somewhere that they were putting fiber optic cable down? Anyone have any info on this? One would think that should help the internet connection speed.