I know this is an old thread, but as of November 2022, exorbitant cell charges on Viking ships are still a problem. I have a bill showing charges of $2.99 US per minute, when I thought I was connected to the local cell carrier when in or near port.
It seems that on the ocean cruises where the ship may leave the range of the local cell towers, the Viking ships are equipped with some sort of maritime link. Perhaps this link performs a useful service when the ship is far from land, but it seems to "take over" your call when you are near land and you believe the call is being handled by the local cell towers. I am not aware of any way to determine whether your call has been hijacked by this onboard "service" or not. Being in sight of land is not enough to ensure that the call is being handled by the local carrier, and therefore covered by packages such as Verizon's "Travel Pass".
Verizon has a clause in the Travel Pass contract stating that the cruise ship charges are not covered. I also noticed that other folks on this thread were charged in Croatia, which is where my most egregious charges were incurred as well. Reading54 describes it well in a 18May-2018 post.
Here is where I think I got tricked: Cell coverage and internet are non-existent when the ship is far out at sea. You fall into the habit of trying to make calls to "test" if you have connectivity or not. Everything works great when you are walking around town in the ports. The grey area occurs when you are skimming the coastline, like the Adriatic cruises tend to do. You can make calls, so you assume that you must be connected to the cell towers on the mainland, which you can see just a few miles away. This was sometimes true, as I can see calls on my bill where this worked as expected. But there are other calls where the dreaded "Cruisesh/, ZZ" appears on the bill as the Origination of the call. Apparently, the maritime link took these calls rather than the local cell towers. So the call is no longer free, instead it is billed at about $3 per minute. Just beware. Personally, I wish Viking would just disable this extra link for cruises of this type. It doesn't seem to extend the coverage range beyond the local cell towers and it only upsets passengers like me. Otherwise, it was a fantastic cruise!
