Telestial cell service on Caribbean Princess

[moomoo1021]

Was interested if anyone used Telestial's cell/data service ? Cruising British Isles 7/8-18 and was considering purchasing their SIM card which , with one of their plans,allegedly includes cell/data service on specific cruise ships and the Caribbean Princess is one of them. The cost is $19 plus $10 complimentary credit. Service includes service on land also in UK/Ireland and France. Rates are .25min/sms/mb.

 

Also looked into Knowroaming which had better rates but no service on ship.

 

Main question, is Telestial worth it just because they have service on ship or is any service on a ship spotty

[VibeGuy]

The service onboard will be GPRS, which is 1G. It's effectively useless for anything other than push notifications. The WiFi, such as it is, will be literally hundreds of times faster. This is an excellent service if your phone needs to be always-connected to receive email notifications and then you log in to WiFi to deal with that which needs dealing with, but a meg of data via GPRS takes literally an hour to download.

 

One question I'd want an answer to from those who have recently sailed the itinerary - does the MCS CellAtSea come on and stay on during these cruises? Many times on port-intensive itineraries in Europe and Alaska, the ship is close enough to shore that the system has to be inhibited under telecoms rules, but far enough that land based signals don't work. So the utility may be limited even for voice.