Cell service on Alaska inside passage: can I pick up signal from the shore?

[cruisead]

Thanks for your responses. I just want to email some pics home during the trip. I don't need wifi otherwise. I don't want the expense of ship wifi for sure.

 

Don't know if you've ever tried emailing photos when not using wifi, but our experience is that it's not worth the time. It can take 20 minutes on a slow server just to download one photo. We wait until we get home to send email photos, using our wifi.

Edited August 16, 2015 by cruisead

[BananaNana]

That is why I was asking about wifi in port like a restaurant. It is no biggie but will still try to send some

[marthalee]

Since you mention US cell phone, you may want to remember that much of the Inside Passage is Canada. That said, it's not as narrow as it may seem in a brochure map - at least not narrow enough for an uninterrupted cell signal -especially one from a US carrier.

If your phone's network search is set to "automatic," you will find it more often than not wanting to connect with whatever the ship has available. If you have an iphone (don't know about others), you can set the network search to manual and have a list if your carrier's Canadian partners handy to select when they're available (or connect to your own carrier in Alaska or from Washington southward.

In Alaska, AT&T is pretty reliable in coastal cities. They also have a Canada/Mexico plan that's not too bad.

But, whatever you do, avoid the ship's cellular.

 

Can you tell me where that iPhone setting is? I am not finding it. Thanks! We leave Saturday!