Grand Princess - San Francisco to Vancouver.

[wee-haggis]

Does anyone know if this cruise route hugs the coastline or is it further out to sea ? I was wondering if cell phones are close enough to cell towers on land ?

[Coral]

Further out at sea.

[fabby50]

We use wifi calling.

[wee-haggis]

6 minutes ago, fabby50 said:

We use wifi calling.

Will texting work through wifi as well ?

[akaCruiser]

I would avoid using cellular service, as your phone will pick up the strongest signal and as such it will be the ship and not the land cellular towers. You'll end up with roaming charges which will be a lot more expensive than using a chat app on the ship's Wifi.

 

Otherwise you will need to wait until they dock and then you will have the ability to go onshore and be hooked up to the regular cellular service. 

[Serious Cruisers]

14 hours ago, akaCruiser said:

I would avoid using cellular service, as your phone will pick up the strongest signal and as such it will be the ship and not the land cellular towers. You'll end up with roaming charges which will be a lot more expensive than using a chat app on the ship's Wifi.

 

Otherwise you will need to wait until they dock and then you will have the ability to go onshore and be hooked up to the regular cellular service. 

We just use WhatsApp on the ship (thru purchased wifi)

 

 

[jeromep]

I'm seeing some abbreviated but good advice here, and some very poor advice here.

 

So, when on a coastal cruise the ship will go offshore into international waters.  You are a long way from the coastline.  They do this so they have no issues with serving alcohol untaxed, and not having to deal with individual state liquor laws and taxes, so they can open the duty free shops, and so they can open the casino (again, because being in U.S. territorial waters subjects the ship to U.S. and state law).

 

Cell tower signal propagation is very short.  Not much more than a mile or two.  If you are in a moving vehicle making a call you will pass through numerous cell sites as you drive, with your call being handed off from site to site as you move.  And while there are cellular towers along most populated areas on the coast, and along coastal highways, they do not propagate that far out into the ocean.  There is a bit of an advantage in terms of getting cell service while off the coast because once on the ocean there is nothing in the way of obstructions to block a line of site radio path, but distance from the cell tower is still a factor.

 

1. Contact your service provider and determine if WiFi Calling is part of your cellular plan.  If not, find out what plans have it and consider upgrading.  WiFi Calling is a no additional charge feature of most cellular plans, mostly because when your phone is connected to WiFi, the calls route over the Internet instead of to cell towers, which preserves bandwidth for other cellular customers.  It is in the cellular provider's best interest to offload as much traffic as they can to terrestrial and wired connections, like high-speed cable, fiber, and DSL, whenever possible.  When I'm at home my phone defaults to WiFi calling when the device is connected to my home network.  It is turned on and just occurs in the background.

 

1a.  Generally speaking, WiFi calling is an option on your phone's settings.  If you see it and can turn it on, it is included in your calling plan.  Again, check with your provider, but in my experience, if WiFi Calling is not part of your plan it will not be visible in your phone's settings.

 

1b.  On iPhone go to the Settings app, choose Cellular, on my phone there is a section for AT&T services, in that section is a line labeled, Wi-Fi Calling.  It will show if the feature is on or off.  Tap on that line and then use the toggles on the subsequent screen to turn on Wi-Fi calling.  One option is Wi-Fi Calling on This iPhone, make the switch green.  Below that is Add Wi-Fi Calling for Other Devices.  I choose to turn this on because it allows me to make and take calls on my iMac, iPad, even my non cellular Apple Watch.

 

2.  When you are on board the ship, the first thing you do with your cell phone is to turn it to airplane mode.  Airplane mode turns off all the wireless transceivers on your phone, this includes the cellular transceiver and the WiFi transceiver.  Generally Bluetooth is not impacted.  You then need to turn on WiFi manually.  This will allow you to join the onboard WiFi provided by Princess, but your cellular transceiver remains off.  Your cellular transceiver needs to be off when on board because there is cellular at sea, but it is really expensive and charges start accruing to your cellular bill almost immediately upon any data being carried on that system.

 

3.  Do you have Plus or Premier.  If so you have Internet access included, so use freely.  If not, you'll need to purchase a plan when on board.  From a value perspective, the Internet access that comes with Plus helps to justify the cost, in my eyes, so do consider an on board package.

 

4.  Assuming that you have a package or have purchased Internet service from Princess.  When you phone is connected to the WiFi and you are further connected to the Internet, WiFi calling will give you a seamless calling and SMS texting experience.  I've made numerous calls with WiFi calling from the ship, received numerous calls, and sent conventional text messages (those of us in Apple land know them as "green" messages).  When connected to the onboard Internet, "blue" messages sent with iMessage operate totally normally, with or without WiFi calling, since native iMessage messages are carried on the Internet not over cellular or WiFi calling.  There is no need for any additional apps or services if you have WiFi calling turned on, and have an Internet package with Princess.

[cr8tiv1]

@jeromep has a wealth of information.  

 

The one thing left out is that "sometimes" iMessaging will work on the ship without purchasing Medallion Net wifi service.  It will only work with another iPhone.  

 

I say sometimes because it has happened to me and my friends.  They could not get the iMessages I was able to send out.  Don't know if it was user error or other.