Cell Phone Roaming Question

Here's a technical question. I signed up for Verizon Travel Pass program. Basically, you get charged $10 for each day you actually use your phone in port. The minutes and data come off your regular Verizon plan. If you use your phone on the ship, you pay the exorbitant charges for calls and data. The question, if you're in port, but on the ship, is there a way to know if your roaming on the Travel Pass program (unlimited minutes and plenty of data) or, are you on the ships roaming ?

Here's a technical question. I signed up for Verizon Travel Pass program. Basically, you get charged $10 for each day you actually use your phone in port. The minutes and data come off your regular Verizon plan. If you use your phone on the ship, you pay the exorbitant charges for calls and data. The question, if you're in port, but on the ship, is there a way to know if your roaming on the Travel Pass program (unlimited minutes and plenty of data) or, are you on the ships roaming ?

When you connect to a cell signal at will tell you the provider.

As a rule ships turn their signals off when about 5 miles from the pier.

Check with Verizon as well for the answer.

On my last cruise, my Verizon roaming and service worked perfectly when we in port (or near shore/islands.). I had no need to sign up for the wireless packages on board when I could easily check my email on shore and from my own suite when we were docked. It was a piece of cake.

We've had a couple really unpleasant surprises with ATT international roaming charges while in port. For example, last December, we were on a SB ship and in a port in Mexico. Our phones indicated that we were connected to the local cellular service, so we expected that our ATT international data package covered our data usage. But, for reasons that utterly baffled us, ATT charged us the very high Cellular at Sea rates.

Since we wouldn't have used data roaming if we'd had an indication that we weren't on the local cellular network, we contested the charges with ATT and ultimately prevailed. But this was the second time that this has happened in a port.

These experiences have left us very leery of using cellular data while in port. Apparently, you can't rely on the information your phone displays re the network you're using.