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Carnival no longer supports wifi calling or ANY calling app on a phone?

chanpion13

By chanpion13,
in Carnival Cruise Lines

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TerReuv

TerReuv

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My information is from my last sailing on the Sunshine last April. When found that we could "call" through messenger on Facebook. Now, it was spotty, but we did call and I think my friend used the video calling to talk to her friend. But they could have cut that off at this point. We could also get text through wifi, with imessages through iphones.

 

My son and his wife did this at the end of May. They only got the social package for the $5 per day. They called me on messenger several times. It was spotty, but it was enough to say hi and see that they were having a great time.

 

ETA: Son has Sprint, we have Verizon. Worked just fine a month and a half ago.

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auscgguysgirl

auscgguysgirl

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I have AT&T.

Our last cruise was April on the Sunshine.

I used Facebook wifi call to talk w/ my friend who was staying at our house watching our animals. I did it several days on the boat w/ no issues.

I had the second tier plan to post to social media and check email for work.

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Anton

Anton

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Did your phone work otherwise in Havana? Is there wifi there? Honestly I have no clue

 

I didn't try to use my cellular plan in Cuba. Wifi is not a common thing to find in Havana or anywhere else in Cuba.

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chanpion13

chanpion13

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Update.

I opted for the $16/day value package which was discounted for buying it for the entire cruise. Also paid $5 separately for Carnival app chat.

 

I was generally able to get onto every site I needed to get on including app store.

 

I was able to use AT&T wifi calling using ship wifi, but could not be in my cabin to use it as the signal wasn’t strong enough. It did work in the common areas of the ship.

 

Wifi was generally slow in the cabin (I was on the fourth floor), but improved slightly outside of it. If you’re patient it’ll be okay. Wasn’t able to really use any video including YouTube. The chat function sometimes had to be closed and reopened to get it to work.

 

Cheers.

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  • 2 years later...
nudistcruzer

nudistcruzer

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I read a post on another website from 6 days ago 2/4/2020.  The post said that the person had full "AT&T wifi" with just the Carnival social Package. That sounds like a fault in their system; but with the more expensive plan they say WiFi Calling is supported at least with Skype on Carnival Ships.

 

The Price for Carnival's Premium (Best) Plan is $14.45 per day no tax or gratuity. This is as of 2/4/2020.

 

 

Edited by nudistcruzer
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Organized Chaos

Organized Chaos

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2 hours ago, nudistcruzer said:

I read a post on another website from 6 days ago 2/4/2020.  The post said that the person had full "AT&T wifi" with just the Carnival social Package. That sounds like a fault in their system; but with the more expensive plan they say WiFi Calling is supported at least with Skype on Carnival Ships.

 

The Price for Carnival's Premium (Best) Plan is $14.45 per day no tax or gratuity. This is as of 2/4/2020.

 

Just to get it out of the way, I'd like to point out that this thread is almost three years old. I'm not sure what that person was talking about and I don't think they know either. They said they had "full AT&T wifi," but I think they were confused. If they bought the onboard Social plan, it doesn't have anything to do with their AT&T service. Wifi Calling and Skype are two different things. Wifi Calling is a feature most phones have these days that allows voice calls (and SMS text messages) that are still routed through your cellular carrier, but instead of happening over the cellular network, they're done over wifi. Despite what was said in this thread a few years ago, Wifi Calling does work on the Premium plan and, if I'm not mistaken, can also work on the Value plan.

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nudistcruzer

nudistcruzer

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The top left of the phone says “AT&T WiFi”.    When WiFi calling is working.  The person only paid for the Social Plan, but still received calls in airplane mode.  The person’s concern was that they were going to incur charges.  On the social plan she shouldn’t have been able to receive calls. She could have been mistaken which plan she bought, but regardless the point was it works.  When searching for the answer about whether “AT&T WiFi” Calling would work, I was led to this old thread.  I figured if the next person found this thread, I could answer the question for them.  Carnival‘s website only mentions that Skype works.  

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Organized Chaos

Organized Chaos

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OK, now I see what they meant. Yeah, "AT&T Wifi" would indicate that their Wifi Calling was turned on. There are a lot of things that Carnival says isn't supported, but they actually work. I think it's their way of covering their rears so as to avoid getting a lot of complaints from passengers if something doesn't work. It's easier for them just to say most things aren't officially supported.

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DebJ14

DebJ14

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I have T Mobile.  I always purchase the middle package and have been able to use WiFi calling on the Valor, Dream and Vista.  We took 4 Carnival cruises in 2019 and used it on all of them.  I will say that the Valor had the worst internet, as far as making wifi calls.  I had to go find an unoccupied bar in order to make calls since internet did not work in our Ocean Suite.  

The Vista had the best service.  I was bothered with multiple calls while sitting at the pool.  I found my own phone ringing and vibrating to be annoying as well as those phones going off around us.  

Everytime I bought the package, it said it did not handle wifi calling, but it really did.

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DebJ14

DebJ14

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2 hours ago, teknoge3k said:

Everyone responding needs to realize this thread is almost 3 years old. Much has changed since this thread begun. 

Yes, and even 3 years ago I was able to make Wifi calls on Carnival even though they said the packages did not support it.

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Organized Chaos

Organized Chaos

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2 hours ago, DebJ14 said:

I was bothered with multiple calls while sitting at the pool.  I found my own phone ringing and vibrating to be annoying as well as those phones going off around us.  

Everytime I bought the package, it said it did not handle wifi calling, but it really did.

 

You can just turn off Wifi Calling, then you won't be bothered by incoming calls anymore. Turn it back on when you need to make a call.

 

We were on the Valor back in December and internet was surprisingly good. Then again, I wasn't using Wifi Calling. But surfing speeds were pretty good and posting photos to Cruise Critic using the Tapatalk app worked well.

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DebJ14

DebJ14

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23 minutes ago, Organized Chaos said:

 

You can just turn off Wifi Calling, then you won't be bothered by incoming calls anymore. Turn it back on when you need to make a call.

 

We were on the Valor back in December and internet was surprisingly good. Then again, I wasn't using Wifi Calling. But surfing speeds were pretty good and posting photos to Cruise Critic using the Tapatalk app worked well.

I would have turned off the WiFi calling, but we were waiting for a doctor to call with news about some tests that hubby had pre-cruise.  He ended up calling us on the drive home from the pier!

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AandBmom

AandBmom

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On 2/17/2020 at 10:16 PM, mac21902 said:

I purchased the value plan for Horizon and was able to use the wifi calling feature on my android phone. I also was able to share my wifi with other people close by. 

Do you have the price handy?

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