texting, how does it work on sea days

Hi,

cant remember how this works.. on the islands, i can roam like home, on ship i will be on airplane mode, but what about texting/costs

thanks, i cruised often, just cant recall..

newlu

It would help if we knew what islands in the world you are going. What country is your carrier service.

I can answer your question since we did our share of texting while on the Reflection (in the Caribbean) this past Nov-Dec (21 days). We have T-Mobile as our carrier and also had about 500 minutes of free internet (Elite Plus).

DW and I both have iPhones (not sure this matters). On board, we were able to use texting when logged onto the ship's Wifi. Because we had so many free minutes this cost us zero. I did keep our phones in airplane mode while out of sight of the islands. Once we were within about 10 miles of an island I was usually able to connect with island cells (which is free if you have T-Mobile). Some islands did not give us any data for some reason. On St Thomas we had good phone connections (we could call the states) but no data (one islander said it was because their cell system was not yet fully repaired after the hurricanes). On some other islands are connections were hit/miss.

When we returned home we did check our cell bills and did not pay one penny for any of the texting. But T-Mobile does include free coverage in over 140 countries (including most of the Caribbean). We cannot speak to other carriers.

Hank

Hank, I wonder if you were actually using Apple’s free Imessaging? This only works if the receiver of the IMessage has an Apple device. At least this is the way it works for us when we are on airplane mode and hooked up to the internet.

With Roam Like Home, once you've paid your daily fee, your internet, text or other usage is simply chalked up against your normal account. You can text as much as you want with no additional charge, as long as you stay within your monthly allowance. As the name suggests, it's just like being at home.

Your problem, as in your other recent thread asking about email, is what to do on the ship. Simply put, if you want to text while out to sea you'll need a wifi package.

Hank, I wonder if you were actually using Apple’s free Imessaging? This only works if the receiver of the IMessage has an Apple device. At least this is the way it works for us when we are on airplane mode and hooked up to the internet.

Yes, we generally do use the Apple iMsg. However, we also used Whatapp for some texting to non-Apple folks, If you have never used WhatsApp its a terrific App which works across nearly any platform and can handle both text and video. Like iMsg it only needs WiFi. I also once tried Messenger (Facebook) which functioned OK. Of course the key to all this is having half decent WiFi service...and this is hit or miss on most ships. Speaking of Apple, we also had great luck using Facetime. I was surprised that the WiFi was good enough to support Facetime....but it worked nearly every sea day.

Hank

 

DW and I both have iPhones (not sure this matters). On board, we were able to use texting when logged onto the ship's Wifi. Because we had so many free minutes this cost us zero.

It cost you zero because you had wifi. Texting via wifi generally means you are not using a cellular connection, so it wouldn't matter how many minutes you have since you are using wifi and not your cellular plan.

Of course, if you don't have a perk that included free wifi you'd pay for that package, but that's different than actually paying for text messages through your cellular carrier.

Last time I checked, while at sea, NOT using WiFi, it cost 5 cents to receive

a text and 50 cents to send one using the ships cellular connection.

Apple iMessage is indeed different as it is not a traditional text message.

You do sometimes have the option on an iPhone to “send as text” when iMessage is not available