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Wifi Calling on Princess cruise?


bigdaddy930
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Hi, our family will be on Regal Princess to Caribbean soon. We will have Wifi package. Can we use Wifi calling while we are at sea? I am hoping to dial in Google Voice to make international call using Wifi calling while I am at sea? We will set our phones to airplane mode, turn on Wifi, turn on Wifi calling and turn off cellular data. Thanks

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1 hour ago, bigdaddy930 said:

Hi, our family will be on Regal Princess to Caribbean soon. We will have Wifi package. Can we use Wifi calling while we are at sea? I am hoping to dial in Google Voice to make international call using Wifi calling while I am at sea? We will set our phones to airplane mode, turn on Wifi, turn on Wifi calling and turn off cellular data. Thanks

Thats all you have to do.

Whether your cell provider offers this is the question as well.

With my ATT it was very sporadic as to whether it was enabled.

On my iPhone it showed ATT WIFI calling in the upper left corner by the internet signal when it was enabled.

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1 hour ago, Thrak said:

Question: Do you have any issue receiving calls when you are using WiFi calling at sea?

 

None on my recent cruise. Of course, there may have been calls to me that I didn’t get and didn’t know I missed. But I did receive calls.

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4 hours ago, 2theship said:

We have Verizon and I did exactly what you describe above. There were no additional charges on my bill when I got home so I guess it worked. We were on the Emerald Princess westbound transatlantic last November.

Thank you. I will give it a try when I am at sea. 

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1 hour ago, lstone19 said:

 

None on my recent cruise. Of course, there may have been calls to me that I didn’t get and didn’t know I missed. But I did receive calls.

 

D'Oh! In retrospect this was kind of a silly question. Of course you would be unlikely to know if calls didn't come through although it is good to know that some calls did come through. Thanks for the answer.

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Adding to my previous post, not only did I receive calls via Wi-Fi calling, I even received calls when the phone was not logged into the ship's Internet (but recently had been). From my experience, even after a forced log out by logging in on a different device (when you log in on a second device, you get an alert that you are already logged in on a different device and asked if you want to disconnect the other device), the phone stayed known and still received calls and app notifications for awhile. This is similar to the behavior I see on some airplanes where when connecting to the plane's wi-fi to access onboard entertainment without purchasing Internet service, I still receive app notifications and can send and receive iMessages. In short, some Internet traffic leaks through to and from the phone even without being logged on to the Internet service.

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5 hours ago, Thrak said:

Question: Do you have any issue receiving calls when you are using WiFi calling at sea?

 

I'm with Verizon.  I've had no issues making calls in the manner described above.  I've found that receiving calls is somewhat less reliable, perhaps 80% of calls make it through.  Also, indications of voice mail waiting are less than perfect.

 

Still, it's truly amazing this technology works at all, so I'm grateful it works as well as it does.

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We have ATT and Wi-Fi calling enabled. We got the unlimited MedallionNet package on our Royal Princess cruise. Actually I hadn't even thought of Wi-Fi calling until my phone rang with a spam call one day onboard. I had the phone in airplane mode and cellular data off. Only then did the light bulb go off and I realized I could do Wi-Fi calling.

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Wifi calling does not use much bandwidth but does require a connection that has low latency.  In other words not much data is being used but the order and timing of the voice is critical.  If it drops a little you get the call broken up.  VOIP calling is a real test of how fast and congested the internet speed capacity and Quality of Service is.  A good provider will give priority to a phone call over a standard download like email.  Streaming TV requires a good connection but can also do some buffering to make up for a little blip in the download.

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1 minute ago, Colo Cruiser said:

I agree. Oh I see what you did there.  🙄

If it's possible mine was better than at home.  😁

LOL! I had a similar comment on a tour we did today of the huge President's Head's here in Williamsburg, the tour guide asked us "what was Warren G. Harding know for?" 

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I used Wifi calling with AT&T with no problems on Princess (without medallion net). I also sent and received texts. However, I did not receive voice mail.

 

The only problem I had receiving calls is that I had limited minutes, so I was not logged on unless I was calling or otherwise using Internet. I haven't yet sailed on a ship with unlimited Wifi.

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13 hours ago, NavyVeteran said:

I used Wifi calling with AT&T with no problems on Princess (without medallion net). I also sent and received texts. However, I did not receive voice mail.

 

The only problem I had receiving calls is that I had limited minutes, so I was not logged on unless I was calling or otherwise using Internet. I haven't yet sailed on a ship with unlimited Wifi.

Did you purchase AT&T's cruise package or just the wifi calling through Princess internet?

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On 1/19/2020 at 8:21 AM, bigdaddy930 said:

Hi, our family will be on Regal Princess to Caribbean soon. We will have Wifi package. Can we use Wifi calling while we are at sea? I am hoping to dial in Google Voice to make international call using Wifi calling while I am at sea? We will set our phones to airplane mode, turn on Wifi, turn on Wifi calling and turn off cellular data. Thanks

 i got charged $149 roaming data with AT&T.  I thought its Medallion you would be ok, when I talked to AT&T they said the roaming charges started on Jan 11th while we were in Ft Lauderdale. Said they'd take it off, but haven't. So be warned. Always keep in Airplane mode.

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