Use of Phone with Data Download at Sea

[mjldvlks]

I had to gather the following information for myself on our upcoming T.A. on Independence, and thought the information would be helpful to those on our cruise - but am also posting on the main board. Hopefully this info will be helpful to someone.

 

Talked to Sprint today and for anyone that has Sprint service or specifically a phone that receives e-mail, etc. (like a Blackberry) you may want to read this. I am sure this would be pertinent to about any service anyone has:

 

If you have a phone that receives data (like e-mail), you will be charged 2 cents a kilobyte if you receive data. This may not sound like much, but I downloaded thousands of KB this month and our son is over 100,000. :eek: You do the math.

 

To avoid horrific charges on your phone while at sea, do the following to your Sprint phone:

1) Select Manage Connections on menu.

2) Select Mobile Network Options

3) Look at the Network Mode. It will likely be set to "On." Set it to "Off."

 

This will stop the data download while you are at sea.

 

As to the phone:

While we are at sea, your phone should work as is. You will be charged $2.49 a minute for phone calls (that is the ship's charge that goes on your carrier's bill and I believe is standard from carrier to carrier).

 

Once we reach England, a regular phone will not work. You must have a phone with a GSM device to make calls in other countries. Most of the typical phones you get from the major carriers do not have this.

 

Sprint has a phone that you can purchase for $79. They will then transfer your regular wireless number to it for the time you will be out of the country. it would work on the ship to. You could then use it for other future trips out of the country.

 

You can also rent phones - we did that last year through a company on-line and they also transferred my wireless number to it. Worked fine but I think this time we will purchase one to have for more than one time use. Renting cost around $100.

 

Rates once we get into England for Sprint are $1.29 minute.

 

Hope this information helps some of you. Even if you don't use Sprint, I would encourage you to pay special attention to the data download so no one has a horrible surprise on the bill when they get home. I also have a wireless broadband card for my laptop and that would also rack up 2 cents a kilobite in charges. That would mean for my typical usage several thousand dollars. Yikes!!!

 

Have a good day. Mary

[BaumD]

I have AT&T with a Smartphone which is GSM. While onboard, their text rate is about the same 2 cents (actually $0.0195/kb). I leave the phone in "Airplane Mode" and data download in MANUAL. When I want my email, I go out of airplane mode, and manually download my email. I have my phone set to limit emails to either 3KB or 5KB. Most important emails are mostly text which are fewer KB's, whereas a lot of the fancy color ads you recieve are very big and they can wait until you get home. So each email downloaded is limited to about $ 0.10. Pretty reasonable. If you start using the smartphone for internet browsing WATCH OUT. It can very expensive very fast.

[uksimonusa]

I had to gather the following information for myself on our upcoming T.A. on Independence, and thought the information would be helpful to those on our cruise - but am also posting on the main board. Hopefully this info will be helpful to someone.

 

Talked to Sprint today and for anyone that has Sprint service or specifically a phone that receives e-mail, etc. (like a Blackberry) you may want to read this. I am sure this would be pertinent to about any service anyone has:

 

If you have a phone that receives data (like e-mail), you will be charged 2 cents a kilobyte if you receive data. This may not sound like much, but I downloaded thousands of KB this month and our son is over 100,000. :eek: You do the math.

 

To avoid horrific charges on your phone while at sea, do the following to your Sprint phone:

1) Select Manage Connections on menu.

2) Select Mobile Network Options

3) Look at the Network Mode. It will likely be set to "On." Set it to "Off."

 

This will stop the data download while you are at sea.

 

As to the phone:

While we are at sea, your phone should work as is. You will be charged $2.49 a minute for phone calls (that is the ship's charge that goes on your carrier's bill and I believe is standard from carrier to carrier).

 

Once we reach England, a regular phone will not work. You must have a phone with a GSM device to make calls in other countries. Most of the typical phones you get from the major carriers do not have this.

 

Sprint has a phone that you can purchase for $79. They will then transfer your regular wireless number to it for the time you will be out of the country. it would work on the ship to. You could then use it for other future trips out of the country.

 

You can also rent phones - we did that last year through a company on-line and they also transferred my wireless number to it. Worked fine but I think this time we will purchase one to have for more than one time use. Renting cost around $100.

 

Rates once we get into England for Sprint are $1.29 minute.

 

Hope this information helps some of you. Even if you don't use Sprint, I would encourage you to pay special attention to the data download so no one has a horrible surprise on the bill when they get home. I also have a wireless broadband card for my laptop and that would also rack up 2 cents a kilobite in charges. That would mean for my typical usage several thousand dollars. Yikes!!!

 

Have a good day. Mary

 

Nearly all major carriers in the US use GSM phones, it is only Nextel/Sprint and Verizon, along with some small local carrier that use other Types (cdma PCS etc). Most gsm phones are tri or quad bank that will work anywhere in the world

[mjldvlks]

Thanks for the helpful information! I would have a meltdown if I came home to a 4 figure phone bill!! :eek::eek:

 

Wonder why it is Verizon and Sprint that primarily don't have GSM phones - could it be......profit?? We were going to upgrade to a GSM phone when our plan renewed recently and Sprint had 2 phones that were GSM - and they are not phones either my DH or me wanted. Very frustrating.

[cb at sea]

It's only 1 week--surely you can 'suspend" your "data downloads" for that short amount of time?????!

[mjldvlks]

It's only 1 week--surely you can 'suspend" your "data downloads" for that short amount of time?????!

 

 

You're right - its a cruise. I never had any intention of leaving it on - I just wasn't sure exactly what to turn off since it is a new phone.

 

I thought there might be people on the boards that would appreciate knowing this in case they are unaware. That's the purpose of the boards.

[ehfl]

Thanks for the helpful information! I would have a meltdown if I came home to a 4 figure phone bill!! :eek::eek:

 

Wonder why it is Verizon and Sprint that primarily don't have GSM phones - could it be......profit?? We were going to upgrade to a GSM phone when our plan renewed recently and Sprint had 2 phones that were GSM - and they are not phones either my DH or me wanted. Very frustrating.

 

 

It's more to do with performance than profit. CDMA (used by Sprint and Verizon) is a MUCH faster service than GSM. CDMA also happens to allow for more conversations within a given range of the spectrum, at higher voice quality.

 

CDMA is also used in Asia, where high-data rate applications such as mobile video conferencing are popular.

 

Sprint has worldband phones which support both CDMA for speed, where available, and GSM in other places. You can also buy or rent GSM phones.

 

Wi-Max (which is also being rolled out by Sprint) is even faster than CDMA.

[Cruiserccl]

I have sprint and i just a phone with everything! What type of phone do you have? and thanks for the info!!!!! :D

[satxdiver]

First I do not work for any phone company nor have I ever. I am an electrical engineer. AT&T (Cingular) and TMobile use a coding method called GSM which is a variation of TDMA (time division multiplexing access). It is an old coding method used for long distance lines where 8 users can simultaneously use the same wire without interference. Most of the rest of the world uses GSM (TDMA) for their cell phones.

 

The world uses four frequency bands. Two are used in North America and two are used in most of the rest of the world. This is due to world wide agreements that date back many years. If you have an AT&T cell phone, it may or may not be a four band (aka world) cell phone. The cheaper and also older ones will only work on the two North American bands. All modern AT&T cell phones use GSM on either the two North American bands or all four world bands.

 

Sprint and Verizon chose to use a coding method called CDMA (code division multplexing access). They believe that it gives better performance than GSM at a cheaper cost for them. CDMA is only used in the USA and Canada for the most part. The rest of the world has adopted GSM.

 

The two coding methods are completely incompatible. You cannot use a CDMA cell phone in a GSM cell and vice versa. It was a business decision on the part of AT&T, TMobile, Sprint and Verizon. AT&T chose to go with the rest of the world.

 

All nations are represented at the World Radiocommunication Conference held every three years in Geneva. There is only one radio spectrum in the world of course. At the conference the spectrum is divided into specific bands assigned to each area of the world by mutual agreement.

 

North America and some other countries in the Americas use the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands for their cell phone operations. The rest of the world uses the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands. Why every part of the world does not use the same frequency bands is based on prior use of the radio spectrum in that area and gets complicated.

 

[mjldvlks]

First I do not work for any phone company nor have I ever. I am an electrical engineer. AT&T (Cingular) and TMobile use a coding method called GSM which is a variation of TDMA (time division multiplexing access). It is an old coding method used for long distance lines where 8 users can simultaneously use the same wire without interference. Most of the rest of the world uses GSM (TDMA) for their cell phones.

 

The world uses four frequency bands. Two are used in North America and two are used in most of the rest of the world. This is due to world wide agreements that date back many years. If you have an AT&T cell phone, it may or may not be a four band (aka world) cell phone. The cheaper and also older ones will only work on the two North American bands. All modern AT&T cell phones use GSM on either the two North American bands or all four world bands.

 

Sprint and Verizon chose to use a coding method called CDMA (code division multplexing access). They believe that it gives better performance than GSM at a cheaper cost for them. CDMA is only used in the USA and Canada for the most part. The rest of the world has adopted GSM.

 

The two coding methods are completely incompatible. You cannot use a CDMA cell phone in a GSM cell and vice versa. It was a business decision on the part of AT&T, TMobile, Sprint and Verizon. AT&T chose to go with the rest of the world.

 

All nations are represented at the World Radiocommunication Conference held every three years in Geneva. There is only one radio spectrum in the world of course. At the conference the spectrum is divided into specific bands assigned to each area of the world by mutual agreement.

 

North America and some other countries in the Americas use the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands for their cell phone operations. The rest of the world uses the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands. Why every part of the world does not use the same frequency bands is based on prior use of the radio spectrum in that area and gets complicated.

 

 

Thanks so much for the great information! I wondered why that was the case. I went into Best Buy recently when looking for a phone (I have the Blackberry Curve due to some work issues) and I asked for a phone we could use overseas for my husband (then he could use for personal and when we are on cruises) and they offered two phones that would work outside of U.S. They were really not the greatest of phones to use every day. So I called Sprint and they verified. I never did understand why that is until now!! Thanks. Mary

[mjldvlks]

I have sprint and i just a phone with everything! What type of phone do you have? and thanks for the info!!!!! :D

 

I have a Sprint Blackberry Curve. Glad the information was helpful! Mary

[suewms1]

Sprint does offer a Blackberry World Edition (8830WE) which will access the GSM bands outside the US (1800 and 900 Mhz bands) as well as the CDMA network within the US.

 

Sue

[Cruiserccl]

I have a Sprint Blackberry Curve. Glad the information was helpful! Mary

Ohhhh i have the Instinct. Thanks again! :D