Use Sprint or Wifi plan for SKYPE?

[amk88]

 I am wanting to keep in touch with my child while on vacation by using Skype or facetime. I have Sprint or I can purchase the premium wifi plan on board and use skype. I noticed that on the premium plan it says you can use skype "where service is available". My question is how often is "service available", would I have better luck with sprint or purchasing the wifi plan.

 

This is for the Carnival Vista traveling to Roatan, Cozumel, & Belize

 

Thank you!

[buckeyefrank]

Service is always available when the ship is out to sea; however, it is not the Sprint network you will be on.  You will be on a company's network named "Cellular at Sea."  They will charge you outrageous roaming fees and data fees.  As a general rule, you want to use your phone as little as possible and don't use data at all.  If you need to keep in touch, wifi is the best way, but you may not be able to skype.  The bandwidth and speed is less than desirable in most cases.  Your  best bet is texting or skype on wifi when in port.

[amk88]

ok, thank you!

[AmBear]

On 5/10/2019 at 8:07 AM, amk88 said:

ok, thank you!

Agreed about wifi, you'll usually see a bunch of crew members on their phones in a port, that usually means there's a free wifi near!

Another alternative to Skype, is Viber, which runs on far less data consumption!

[Organized Chaos]

On 5/9/2019 at 2:38 PM, amk88 said:

 I am wanting to keep in touch with my child while on vacation by using Skype or facetime. I have Sprint or I can purchase the premium wifi plan on board and use skype. I noticed that on the premium plan it says you can use skype "where service is available". My question is how often is "service available", would I have better luck with sprint or purchasing the wifi plan.

 

This is for the Carnival Vista traveling to Roatan, Cozumel, & Belize

 

Thank you!

 

Carnival's Premium wifi plan does support Skype. And you'll be on the Vista, which is a good thing. The Vista & Horizon have Carnival's best wifi service. So you should be good to go with the Premium plan.

 

There's a chance you'll be able to use FaceTime, too, but it's not officially supported.

 

Your Sprint service will work while the ship is still at the terminal (at its home port), but once they get out to sea, they'll activate the Cellular at Sea service. You don't want your phone connecting to that, so before you set sail, put your phone into Airplane Mode. Once you turn that on, it might automatically disable wifi, so you might have to turn that on manually. You can have wifi ON while the phone is in Airplane Mode.

Edited May 15, 2019 by Organized Chaos