Cell Phones at Sea

[slomotion]

I have found that Wireless Maritime Services has some electronic interface that permits you to use your own cell phone while at sea. (It is turned off when in port) They've partnered up with a variety of cell phone providers including Verizon which is my carrier.

 

I've called Verizon and added international service which is what is used and the charge from Verizon is $2.49 per minute which isn't bad to be able to check voice mail.

 

Does anyone know if HAL adds a fee to this?

 

Rest assured I'll not be using my cell in any place other than my cabin or verandah and not to talk to people, only to check home & office voice mail.

[CruiserBruce]

Others will confirm this, but I believe that $2.49 rate is a combo of the ship's arte as well as the phone service's.

[kjw869]

Others will confirm this, but I believe that $2.49 rate is a combo of the ship's arte as well as the phone service's.

 

That's correct. I have used it only once for two minutes a year ago. My carrier, AT&T also charges $2.49 a minute, but I was charged only $1.99.

 

I've encountered other times when I have been charged less. I have had the same cell phone number since 1987 through the "same carrier" that has gone from Wisconsin Bell/Cingular/SBC to AT&T for the past 24 years.

 

The $2.49 a minute is a bargain when in 1987 we were charged $3.70 a minute. It was expensive when folks dialed the wrong number.

[willowtak]

I have international service on my Sprint plan. I did find there was, for lack of a better description, a dead area when leaving a port. Due to a medical emergency I was leaving the ship at the next port. My phone would not work. I was with a group of people at the time and several gave me their phones and they would not work either. After we were out a ways they all worked fine.

[Mary Ellen]

I'd be leery of getting Verizion's International Plan through a phone call to them - unless you've had it before - on that same phone. We went to a Verizon store last summer to add that for an European cruise. The person "helping" us forgot to do something to the sim card. Our phones are 'International' phones, but that sim card still had to have something activated. We couldn't use our phones anywhere but on the ship. We'd used HAL's cell service onboard in Europe before (you do not need an International Plan to do so), but this time we wanted to be able to use our phones on land too. Didn't happen.

 

Our HAL cruise this year was from Sydney to Singapore. Got the phone set up correctly this time. But what we learned this cruise was, that in some countries, it is less expensive to use the cell through the ship's satellite than on shore. Verizon gave us a printout of the charges involved in making calls from each country we visited, as well as from the ship. Good information to have.

[Himself]

I am on Verizon and mine does not work at Sea--Thanks be to God.