In the Bahamas, you can either get internet access on your phone by paying an exorbitant amount of $10 per day for 500MB or you can get a BTC (BalTeCo, Bahamas Telephone Company) SIM card and access internet like a local would.
BTC stores are all over the Bahamas and usually in walking distance from any port of entry. Once you have a SIM card, you will need to do these steps to get and to renew internet on your phone.
First, you need to have money on your account. To do this, you can either call BTC and add funds to your account, but this is a very slow and ineffective way. The other way is to download and install the BTC app and register your account with it.
In the App, there is a menu called BTC Top Up, where you can add money to your account with a credit card. Once you have money in the account, you can then follow these steps to convert your money into data.
FYI, the best value plan costs $35 + 7.5% tax, so you should add $38 to your account when you Top Up.
The first step is to call *203#
This will take you to the BTC menu option where you can carry out all changes to your account and convert money into products.
When you hit send, this screen will pop up. I speak English, so I selected option 1.
Option 1 shows you what plan you currently have.
Option 2 is voice and data, but if you have WhatsApp, then you can make calls over the internet and won't need to spend extra money on voice plans.
Option 3 is just data.
Select Option 3.
Now it gives you the choice of the different data plans available. Option 5 has the best value of dollars per gigabyte, and costs $35 + 7.5% tax, so a bit under $38.
Select option 5.
Press 1, and you have now selected your new data plan.
The call will now terminate and you will not have internet. You now need to turn off and restart your phone. When your phone turns on, you will receive a text message from BTC letting you know that you have renewed your data plan and that you need to restart your phone to activate it. You now have internet access!
The BTC App's Quick Top Up requires internet access to work, so it is wise to keep money in your account so that if you run out of data, all you need to do is dial *203# to add more data. If you find yourself without money in your account and no internet access, you will have to wait until you get to a BTC store or try the long process of waiting on hold for the next available BTC representative to add funds to your account for you.
With that you are all set to enjoy internet access while in the Bahamas!
