Sprint Global Roaming in Europe

[STXer]

My wife and I will be on the Royal Princess in mid June for a Greek Isles cruise. I just activated the free Sprint Global Roaming service for our IPhones which allows unlimited texts and data (@2g speeds) and phone calls at 20 cents per minute while in Greece. Theoretically when in port or at sea close to the surrounding islands we should be able to use our phones for email and surfing the web without buying the relatively pricey Princess Internet plans. My questions are does anyone actually have any experience with this plan in Europe while on a cruise and, if so, did you have cell phone service while at sea traveling between islands. I believe all the larger Greek islands have cell service but I don't know how far the signal reaches out to sea.

[Jeter02]

I use this plan every summer while traveling throughout Europe. In all honestly, I learned you need to upgrade (for a fee) to 3g. The free 2g never seems to strong enough to work. When upgrading the speed, you can either or call sprint, or what I like to do is just contact them via chat on their website. Tell them you would like to pro-rate the upgrade for only the length of time you need it for. That is what I do. Definitely a great perk that free internet so I can google map things, and message family and friends.

[STXer]

I was wondering if the upgrade would be necessary. I believe it is $5/day or $25/week and was planning to wait and see if it was necessary and activate once I was there if necessary. But even at $50 for 2 weeks (we will be in the area for a couple of weeks) it is definitely reasonable if it works well.

[DrivesLikeMario]

Jeter - That's excellent information, thanks! I noticed in the Caribbean that the 2g didn't work as well as I wanted it to also. We ended up using the ship's service most of the time. Think I'll definitely set up the 3g for Europe. Thanks!

[Jeter02]

Also another great reason to upgrade, the Uber app won't work on the standard 2g speed.

[Number6]

I am on a cruise this summer in Europe and I was thinking about this. I was considering buying one of those Orange Holiday SIM cards instead. Of course, I would have a temporary French phone number, but it's pre-paid and seems to be a good way to avoid surprises at bill time.

 

Anyone tried those?

 

 

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[Jeter02]

I've done sim cards before. Problem I experienced with that wasa, I needed google maps / internet as that sucked up all the megabytes. This was before Sprint (my phone carrier) started offering their global roaming plan years ago. I probably spent more money with those prepayed sim cars as I always needed to top up on them. Just upgrading with the phone carrier with less expensive, and just more convenient.

[STXer]

Assuming I have an IPhone with the free Sprint International Roaming Plan and I am sitting on my ship balcony as we are in port, or just a mile or so off shore while in the Greek Isles, how can I tell if I am connected to a land based cell tower (minimal charge) or the ship phone system (pricy). Hopefully there is an obvious icon that will identify if I am connected to the Princess phone system so I can avoid inadvertently running up a large phone bill.

[STXer]

To close the loop on this thread, we just got back last week from our cruise in Greece. I connected to the local cell service every day on my IPhone in Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. While the data service was slow, I was able to check and send emails, post photos to Facebook, etc. most of the time. If we were within a couple of miles of land I would have a cell signal in my room most of the time. Whenever we were out of range and then reentered cell service range I would get a text message from Sprint saying "Welcome to Greece (or whatever country) Texts: $0.00, Calls: $0.20/min, FreeMsg and Low-speed data included at no additional costs". I just checked our usage on line and we had $17.20 in phone calls (86 minutes) and $0.11 in data usage for some reason, which I think I can live with. When out at sea I would get a Sprint text message stating "Welcome to Cruise! Calls $2.99/min..." so there was ample warning when higher rates applied.

 

So, if you have Sprint it is pretty much a no brainer to sign up for this free service if traveling to Europe.

[princess09]

Another feature with Sprint is free wifi calling. Ask Sprint to turn it on before you leave for Europe. When you're connected to wifi, you can call the states for free; it's like calling from home. We used that feature to call the kids, make an appointment, etc. FREE!

[DrOfBytes]

When out at sea I would get a Sprint text message stating "Welcome to Cruise! Calls $2.99/min..." so there was ample warning when higher rates applied.

 

Thank you for your update. I also have Sprint Global Roaming and even after reading your update I'm still leery of having my phone connect to the ship's cell tower even if I do get a text saying that I'm connected to their tower. I'm afraid of background apps sending/receiving data before I have a chance to go to airplane mode, or not noticing the text message and not going to airplane mode at all. That apparently wasn't an issue for you. Am I being paranoid?

 

Other people on this thread have mentioned they had apps that wouldn't work with the free 2G. Did you have any apps not work on 2G? You mentioned several things that did work, which I'm glad to hear about.

 

The best news about your post is the text messages letting you know if you're connected to the ship's tower or not. Good information!

[STXer]

Both my wife and I pretty much just used email, Facebook, and Around Me while in Europe and most of the time they worked fine. I also used my Yahoo Homepage/Newsfeed daily with no problems other than being somewhat slow. But living in the Virgin Islands we are used to slow internet service so it might seem much slower to those spoiled by living in the States. We did keep our phones in airplane mode and wifi turned off when on the ship and not actively using our phones just in case. By the way, Around Me (a free app) proved to be very useful in Europe with its mapping feature. We used it in Athens, Venice, and on every Greek island when trying to figure out where we were and how to get where we wanted to go.