Cell Phone international problems

[LynnTTT]

We use T-Mobile Senior service.  We signed up with them because of the "free international calls" sales pitch.  Well, not so much. We took a three week river cruise in August and now we get a text message on one line/number saying that we may be in breach of contract.  According to T-Mobile, our contract (and I'm sure they are right) says that we cannot use international roaming for more than 50% of our usage in any 3 billing cycles over a 12 month period.

Well, we're here in the US now, but in January we will be on a world cruise and out of country for 4 months.  

Any advice? We could maybe ramp up use on one line, which seems silly. Use one phone for 2 months and then the other for second two months?  

Maybe T-Mobile has a more extensive plan available, but right now I'm upset about a shady sales pitch.

[Wendy The Wanderer]

I know nothing about T-Mobile and I live in Canada so our plans would be completely different.  But...how much do you think you need to use your phones on this trip?  

 

I'm tryng to imagine.  Mostly I use my phone for surfing the web--i.e., wifi.  I don't talk on my phone much, and I certainly won't be doing that on a world cruise.  Text messages are handy to keep in touch with family, and if I have wifi, maybe Whatsapp, possibly video calling.  But only text messages for the actual cellular communications part.

 

So ask yourself how much you really need your phones and for what.

[HBCcruiser]

I’m not sure if this interests you but it is a mobile hotspot that works pretty much everywhere. I always travel with it. It worked great on our river cruises and regular cruises.

[LynnTTT]

I guess I'm a dummy about this technology.  I looked at the link and still don't know what it means?  🙂

  WE will have our iphones for photos.  But the Wifi on a four month cruise is bound to be very expensive.  And we're trying not to have to spend precious time in ports sitting at cafes and fast food places trying to send photos to the kids etc.

I even thought I might try to do a blog while on the trip.

So am I screwed? I'll have to buy the Wifi onboard and hope that it's fast?  Which I know it won"t be .  I suspect that our Costa cruise WiFi won't be very fast.

I love surfing the internet and have missed it on days at sea on much shorter cruises.

Any suggestions

[Wendy The Wanderer]

17 hours ago, LynnTTT said:

I guess I'm a dummy about this technology.  I looked at the link and still don't know what it means?  🙂

  WE will have our iphones for photos.  But the Wifi on a four month cruise is bound to be very expensive.  And we're trying not to have to spend precious time in ports sitting at cafes and fast food places trying to send photos to the kids etc.

I even thought I might try to do a blog while on the trip.

So am I screwed? I'll have to buy the Wifi onboard and hope that it's fast?  Which I know it won"t be .  I suspect that our Costa cruise WiFi won't be very fast.

I love surfing the internet and have missed it on days at sea on much shorter cruises.

Any suggestions

 

 I don't really understand the technology above either, but I looked at their website and there's a daily charge for a particular country, so I'm not sure how useful it would be on a cruise--I haven't investigated very far however.

 

Yes, wifi onboard will probably be slow and expensive.  You can write your blog offline and then upload when convenient, and yes, that might be at a cafe or other public wifi location.  Yes, I love surfing too, and will write offline, probably on a laptop, but then I'm going to try to just enjoy thee wonderful places, and the ship, without spending much time surfing at all (although still want to post here and to FB.)

[baz48]

We have T-Mobile with the Simple plan.  I think that's the name anyway.  It gives us unlimited data and texting in foreign countries and phone calls are usually 25 cents a minute or less.  Perhaps you could switch to that plan for your cruise?  And if you have the wifi on the cruise, you can use it to make calls from the ship either by setting your phone to wifi calling or using an app like Watsapp.  But I agree, how much calling do you plan to do?  

 

Are you sure you don't get included wifi on your cruise?  Or perhaps at least a discount since you're doing a world cruise.  

[Heidi13]

When out in the RV we use a Mobile Hotspot (Mi-Fi), but it is based on the cell networks and requires a cell signal. These are not available aboard the ship, so I cannot see how the technology listed in a previous post is of any use aboard ship.

 

Aboard ship, except when in port, or close to shore you require a satellite connection. Really only available from the ship.

 

Unless we have visited a port many times before, we also have no desire to waste time finding an internet cafe or library.

 

Unfortunately, on Costa and many other cruiselines, if you want internet, it costs lots of $$$. We are lucky, as our first WC our status with Princess provided lots of free minutes and with Viking the wi-fi is both reasonably fast & free.