Forum Discussion
Coverage on Royal Caribbean Cruse
Hi everyone, I will be taking a cruise to Mexico on Royal Caribbean's Navigator of the Seas ship. I don't see it on being covered on T-Mobile's site, so I am wondering if I would have access to any...
Cruise ship usage is very expensive! Upwards of $7 a minute for calls, upwards of $3 for a text, and so on. Purchase a WiFi package from the cruise provider and make sure you place your device in Airplane Mode when you get within a couple of miles of the ship.
cjake wrote:Once the ship is out of range of land based cellular towers signals will be transmitted via satellite, which is one reason for the expensive charges.
That … and because they can. Ship's WiFi also comes from satellite (same ones, most likely), and should have usable service. Part of the reason that it is expensive….there's no competition, and they need to set up as a cellular provider (vs. WiFi) and keep in compliance with all the local country requirements. I.e. frequencies in US are different than those in EU and AP. Similarly, there are restrictions in some countries to their operation within local country maritime borders (5 miles from coast?).
Ironically .. Cellular at sea page has items for AT&T and Verizon … but doesn’t like T-Mobile
In a similar note: Cellular at Sea (at least from US?) is not expected to work until 12 nautical miles from land. This doesn't mean that you might not pick it up or get registered!
Just as a secondary note: WiFi is often recommended on the ships because the ships run their own shipwide wifi with ship based services available that do not require 'Internet' (walled garden). Much like using Airplane WiFi, you can use 'local' services, and pay for full Internet access. Ironically, many moons ago, using Princess from LA → Hawaii, on WiFi only, many Google services still worked w/o paying for actual Internet service.
