read on Belize Forums...Thanks for
THIS ARTICLE ! I've been in tech for 20 years and recently switched to a well paying remote position. In theory I can work from anywhere. So I decided to try this out and work from Belize for several weeks... here are my discoveries...
1. Internet is pretty darn stable. There are decent internet cafe's in most larger towns. The best I used was the office supply in Placencia and second, an internet cafe in Belize City that used some cable satellite dish. The cafe's are good, but can get loud-ish. Terrible if your trying to have business calls.
2. Regretfully I used my mobile phone (an iPhone 3G) for most calls. BTL was perfect and never dropped a call. My caller-id worked great back to the US. I'm scared to see what my bill is going to be.
3. I found the internet pretty darn good in most hotels. Hotel Mopan had a good signal (once they fixed it due to some power surge that knocked them out for a few days). I stayed in a cabin in Placencia where the owner/associate had DSL. It worked, and I got to execute my dream - working right on the beach. I only got nervous when the power went out once or twice - didn't last long though.
4. I brought double power supplies and double important cables as I use a MAC. Next time I go I'll bring 2 MACs. The computers there are fairly old - you see the tech people in the internet cafes fixing 5 year old systems (maybe older). If my MAC with it's fancy VMs died, I would be stuck - need redundancy.
5. No Skype AND even worse, no PPTP. Major drag, but seems like a tunnel will work. I didn't try it but people recommended this. This was the thing that made me most nervous. Also what sucks is I can't bring down my VOIP desk phone. They filter VOIP traffic. I figure the tradeoff is BTL with no dropped calls as they are raking it in.
6. Wi-Fi can be touch and go. We are spoiled in the US with good, cheap, Wi-Fi routers. Some peoples routers in Belize were perfect. Others were unbelievable bad - like you had to be 5 feet from them. Some were mysterious and didn't work with some devices. Odd.
7. Oh and I was stuck in the airport for a few hours due to the normal delays. Had lots of Belikin to keep me correct till my next visit. Was pleased to have nice high speed internet in the international airport. Sucked when I got the $16 bill on my credit card.
Anyway, I was pretty nervous as first but my main VPN connection didn't use PPTP so I was lucky (uses some Java Juniper client). After that things got easier.
I'm building a house there and not sure what connection I will choose. Seems like Satellite gives you peace of mind but is expensive and low bandwidth. DSL is doable, need to tunnel. But Cable Dish would be the best - get TV and seemingly the best speed + tunnel.
Anyway, high tech workers can indeed work with a backpack and a Belikin in Belize (with some creative problem solving).
AmbergrisCaye.com 
