Mobile hot spot on ships?

[ree1009]

Hi. Sorry if this has been asked. My soon to be husband has a 16yr old daughter that will be staying with my parents while we are on our honeymoon. Does anyone know if a mobile hot spot on a cell phone works on the ship? Can we use it to video chat with her at home? Thanks in advance.

[MrPete]

You would have to buy the internet package, but the speed is pretty sluggish.

 

You might consider setting up some accounts in Funville and talk through there on Carnivals dime.

[i5trucker]

The ships have Internet WiFi, but it is very slow and expensive. Sometimes you can find free wifi in ports or Internet cafes that are less expensive than ships Internet.

[ree1009]

Thank you. I had forgotten about that. You can post there for free, right?

[dph2013]

The cellular and data signals to cell phones is provided by a satellite service "cellular at sea" as there are no US cellular towers in the ocean. If you were to try to produce a "hot spot" off of your cell phone through a cellular signal you will be unpleasantly surprised by an astronomical cell phone bill.

[MrPete]

Thank you. I had forgotten about that. You can post there for free, right?

 

Correct! :)

[Holders3]

Depending on the ship she may be able to buy an unlimited data package for about $100. I didn't try FaceTime or Skype on it but others have said it worked on the hi speed package. Otherwise there is the cabin phone for $1.99 a minute.

[Cruizinman]

Only problem in using the funville forums for communicating with your family is it's not private. When I used it a while back we had a few of the funville forum huggies interrupting our conversations.

 

It works fine other than that .

[Cruiser 4 Life 66]

Hi. Sorry if this has been asked. My soon to be husband has a 16yr old daughter that will be staying with my parents while we are on our honeymoon. Does anyone know if a mobile hot spot on a cell phone works on the ship? Can we use it to video chat with her at home? Thanks in advance.

 

Mobile hot spots on cell phones are created using the cellular signal. She will not get cellular signals at sea, so she cannot create a mobile hot spot. She can use wifi on the phone if you buy the ship's internet package, but video chat uses a lot of bandwidth and internet speeds are slow on ships. Like old fashioned 28.8 modem speeds. Even the new "high speed" packages are not as fast as home connections. Video chat is not recommended while at sea due to this.

[big_duck]

Mobile hot spots on cell phones are created using the cellular signal. She will not get cellular signals at sea, so she cannot create a mobile hot spot.

 

For your own education: http://www.mcp.com/products-services/cellatsea%C2%AE/

 

On the other hand using international data is definitely prohibitively expensive.

[ree1009]

Thank you so much for all of your responses!

 

Her Mom passed away and we have never left her this long. I know she will be fine with my parents, I just thought it would help her feel better if she could "see" her Dad :) We plan to call. I just wasnt sure if it would be worth it to add the hotspot. I am glad I asked :)