International calling in ports

[Julzizzle]

Can anyone recommend the best and cheapest place to call the states when in port? Western sailing on FOS. Leaving 9 YO DS home and will want to call and check in. Do you buy a international calling card here or there? Any info appreciated. Thanks!

[DebJ14]

Can anyone recommend the best and cheapest place to call the states when in port? Western sailing on FOS. Leaving 9 YO DS home and will want to call and check in. Do you buy a international calling card here or there? Any info appreciated.

 

I have international roaming activated on my T-Mobile Cell phone. I pay $1.29 a minute in port and a whole lot more if using it on the ship. A calling card is probably cheaper, but I prefer to just step out on the balcony and make my calls while in port. The bills have never been very high as I watch my time carefully. I have found that texting is much cheaper. You also might want to look into taking your laptop ashore to a wifi hotspot and using Skype. It doesn't work on the ship because the internet is too slow. I take my laptop and use Skype all the time when we take a land based vacation.

[Julzizzle]

So when in port it dosent automatically use the ships cell phone tower, it will use the land based one?

[kgm0612]

So when in port it dosent automatically use the ships cell phone tower, it will use the land based one?

 

Yes. Who is your carrier?

 

I have Verizon and I do not have an international calling plan. I did call Verizon prior to sailing and rates per minute are different on each island. Prices ranged from $1.99 upwards to $2.69 a minute. All texts were 50 cents to send and 5 cents to receive.

 

Karen

[SevenSeas1492]

When in Mexico in September, we used an AT&T international prepaid calling card ($30) which never expires. Worked beautifully in their payphones and was around $.18 per minute. I bought ours online, and they just give you a pin#, or you can buy them at Walmart. The fact that it never expires sold me and I guess the AT&T name. I had never heard of some of the others, and they may have worked fine--just didn't want to chance it.

[waterrats]

Check with your carrier, I think both Verizon and AT&T are about $2.50 per minute on all RCCL ships. As mentioned prior, outgoing texts are 50 cents and incoming texts are a nickel. Texting is a great and cheap alternative to calling.

 

joe