Blackberry on Cruise

[Qtvagurl11]

I was wondering if it cost extra to email in international waters. I dont want to have to call back home just a quick email would be great. Does any one have this information? I am with Verizon if that helps. My parents are watching my kid and if something happens and they need to get a hold of that would be great.

 

THANKS!!!!

[travelntreats]

I was wondering if it cost extra to email in international waters. I dont want to have to call back home just a quick email would be great. Does any one have this information? I am with Verizon if that helps. My parents are watching my kid and if something happens and they need to get a hold of that would be great.

 

THANKS!!!!

The best answer is to call Verizon and ask them what fee's you may incur while at sea.... Use of a cell phone (including email) can get pricey when it is involved with the ships tower.....

[Steve-N-Steph]

Don't know about Verizon, but I have T-Mobile and I imagine it is similiar. I had to add the international email plan, which was 19.99 per month. When I called they offered to add it just for the length of my cruise, so I only cost me a few dollars. I was able to email back and forth unlimited to my kids at home. This was a much cheaper option than using the ships internet. Check into it with Verizon it worked great for me!

[dsb9938]

There's a phone number for them to call you on the ship in case of emergency, otherwise just use the internet cafe on the ship. Last time I used the wi-fi and my laptop it was $1 per minute.

[Qtvagurl11]

Thanks! I have a real close friend who works for Verizon so I will just ask him. Just thought if you guys have experienced it you maybe a little more help.

[lintman]

Here is a link to Verizon's International Roaming rates. I didn't have much luck finding that rates for data on a cruise ship.

 

http://b2b.vzw.com/international/Roaming/rates_coverage.html

 

With AT&T it is about $.02 per KB for international data. I saw some rates for international data with Verizon that were lower and some that were higher. You would have to call them to verify what they would consider the cruise ship.

[Gecko7]

I recall our last cruise that Carnival uses ATT at SEA which was about $2.99 per minute. I turned my phone off since I wasd on VC.

[poobears]

This reminds me of our cruise last year. We went to pursers desk to add more $$ to our cash account. There was a family there with the Mom I assume getting irrate at the woman behind the desk. Guess her and the kids (5 or 6 of them, plus a few more adults) had all been calling each other and texting on their cells. They figured since they were only calling people on the ship there'd be no charge. WRONG

 

I don't know how high the bill was but I could see it was 4 or 5 pages long. She kept saying, even if they are just in the next room I have to pay. They said yes any calls or text messages bounce off our ship tower and you get charged for them.

 

No idea what happened, I paid and left. I would be sure to check with your phone company and carnival. Make sure emailing isn't going to be charged on your S&S account, in addition to what the phone company charges.

[lizardhowson]

This reminds me of our cruise last year. We went to pursers desk to add more $$ to our cash account. There was a family there with the Mom I assume getting irrate at the woman behind the desk. Guess her and the kids (5 or 6 of them, plus a few more adults) had all been calling each other and texting on their cells. They figured since they were only calling people on the ship there'd be no charge. WRONG

 

I don't know how high the bill was but I could see it was 4 or 5 pages long. She kept saying, even if they are just in the next room I have to pay. They said yes any calls or text messages bounce off our ship tower and you get charged for them.

 

No idea what happened, I paid and left. I would be sure to check with your phone company and carnival. Make sure emailing isn't going to be charged on your S&S account, in addition to what the phone company charges.

 

It's amazing that some folks must think there are cell phone towers just floating around the ocean. :eek:

 

If you're gonna use your phone (cell or wifi) it's gonna go thru the Carnival cellular at sea system or Carnival wifi and gonna cost extra (either $2.49 minute for cell or $.75 minute for wifi) And texting goes thru cell side.

 

Carnival doesn't give those minutes away for free !

 

Even with a roaming package from your carrier, unless you are in port, it's gonna cost extra !

[trock]

This reminds me of our cruise last year. We went to pursers desk to add more $$ to our cash account. There was a family there with the Mom I assume getting irrate at the woman behind the desk. Guess her and the kids (5 or 6 of them, plus a few more adults) had all been calling each other and texting on their cells. They figured since they were only calling people on the ship there'd be no charge. WRONG

 

I don't know how high the bill was but I could see it was 4 or 5 pages long. She kept saying, even if they are just in the next room I have to pay. They said yes any calls or text messages bounce off our ship tower and you get charged for them.

 

No idea what happened, I paid and left. I would be sure to check with your phone company and carnival. Make sure emailing isn't going to be charged on your S&S account, in addition to what the phone company charges.

 

 

I don't understand this.. Like everyone else, would the bill not come from the phone company and not the cruise line? and would they not show up until the following month's bill?

[lizardhowson]

I don't understand this.. Like everyone else, would the bill not come from the phone company and not the cruise line? and would they not show up until the following month's bill?

 

Maybe they were doing everything thru Carnival Wifi on a per minute basis...

 

That would get added to Sign & Sail, correct ?

[*CruiseFan*]

If it's through your company I would just ask them. I freaked out when my crackberry automatically turned on and I was getting emails from work so I took the battery out. Low and behold, it didn't cost them anything extra (but who wants work emails on a cruise? Not me!) Otherwise ask Verizon :) Your cruise is coming up soon!!!

[trock]

Maybe they were doing everything thru Carnival Wifi on a per minute basis...

 

That would get added to Sign & Sail, correct ?

 

 

I am not sure... I thought the email on blackberry goes through the Verizon Network..

Unless they do not have email and are going to set it up for the cruise only?? Probably better off with texting ...

[Steve-N-Steph]

It's amazing that some folks must think there are cell phone towers just floating around the ocean. :eek:

 

If you're gonna use your phone (cell or wifi) it's gonna go thru the Carnival cellular at sea system or Carnival wifi and gonna cost extra (either $2.49 minute for cell or $.75 minute for wifi) And texting goes thru cell side.

 

Carnival doesn't give those minutes away for free !

 

Even with a roaming package from your carrier, unless you are in port, it's gonna cost extra !

 

This is NOT TRUE! Carnival does not charge you directly! If you use your cell phone you pay only your cell phone bill. This includes all voice calls, text messages, email & internet. Anyone who tells you differently is WRONG! Each carrier has a roaming agreement with Carnival or more specifically cellular at sea who OWNS the towers. And they receive their money through roaming agreements with each carrier! You need to check with your carrier and ONLY your carrier to determine your rates while at sea. I have been on 4 cruises used my phone, text and email, and have NEVER paid a cent to carnival for using my cellphone. If you use carnivals phone's in your stateroom or carnival's computers or wifi internet with your laptop then you would pay a fee to carnival. Again I will restate that your S&S card will NEVER be billed for using your cellphone!

[poobears]

I don't understand this.. Like everyone else, would the bill not come from the phone company and not the cruise line? and would they not show up until the following month's bill?

 

 

I guess not, obviously they got a bill from the ship for their minutes used on the ship tower. I haven't used a cell on board so I don't know how it works. But she had bill in hand and was not happy at all. They were explaining to her how it goes through their tower and each call gets charged. Told her the only way not to get charged was to use the ships phone in the room and dial the other room, not her cell.

 

I've always assumed she had her S&S bill in her hand. I guess she could have logged into her phone account from one of the computers and printed off her current usage and that's what was in her hand. I know ours shows up at the end of the day.

 

I was just glad I wasn't her. That was one thick bill.

[Steve-N-Steph]

I don't understand this.. Like everyone else, would the bill not come from the phone company and not the cruise line? and would they not show up until the following month's bill?

 

 

That is correct!

[lizardhowson]

This is NOT TRUE! Carnival does not charge you directly! If you use your cell phone you pay only your cell phone bill. This includes all voice calls, text messages, email & internet. Anyone who tells you differently is WRONG! Each carrier has a roaming agreement with Carnival or more specifically cellular at sea who OWNS the towers. And they receive their money through roaming agreements with each carrier! You need to check with your carrier and ONLY your carrier to determine your rates while at sea. I have been on 4 cruises used my phone, text and email, and have NEVER paid a cent to carnival for using my cellphone. If you use carnivals phone's in your stateroom or carnival's computers or wifi internet with your laptop then you would pay a fee to carnival. Again I will restate that your S&S card will NEVER be billed for using your cellphone!

 

If this is the case, do you mind saying who your carrier is and what plan you are on while cruising.

[Steve-N-Steph]

Not at all. I have T-Mobile. I have international roaming but do not pay for a discounted rate. On my first cruise I paid $4.99 per minute for a phone call to which I limited to a two minute call. That was really high I thought. Before I left for my second cruise I called T-Mobile and they added the blackberry international email plan only for the days I would be on the cruise. I have since used this and it only ends up costing me a few dollars each time, depends on how many days the cruise is. I did use the internet one time on my phone, and was charged by the kb, but do not remember how much it was. A few dollars I believe. Also my last cruise I did text a lot! My kids were home and my son was playing in his first Varsity Basketball tournament, so my husband had to be updated constantly about how the games were going. I have an unlimited text message bundle and all my incoming texts are free (included in the messaging bundle) All outgoing texts were .35 cents each. We tried to limit the outgoing texts. Now a note - T-Mobile will charge you if you receive any voicemail notifications to your phone even if you don't answer your phone or even if you don't check the voicemail. They said it would be $4.99 each time I got a notification. I bypassed this notification by signing up for a different voicemail service called YOUMAIL. I set my call forwarding to forward all calls, so they would never come to my phone. I then set up my notifications to only alert me to voicemails by text not the usual voicemail notification as all incoming text messages are free with a bundle. So therefore my phone never rang but I was able to leave it on all the time to receive texts and emails. And if someone left me a voice mail the text message also told me who called and left the voicemail. I think this is a great service, and now use it all the time instead of T-Mobiles voicemail. If anyone is interested or wants more info on YouMail let me know.

 

lizardhowson - I just noticed your highlighted text in your last post. I just want to make sure that you know I did pay T-Mobile for all these services, but never paid CARNIVAL. Just wanted to be clear.

[vbecky]

If you don't mind me asking I am going on a cruise and I was going to add the 19.99 international emailing to my tmobile plan. So you didn't have any additional charges than for sending or receiving emails? Sounds silly but does it matter if itstates (gprs, edge, wifi, uma) Thanks so much

[lizardhowson]

lizardhowson - I just noticed your highlighted text in your last post. I just want to make sure that you know I did pay T-Mobile for all these services, but never paid CARNIVAL. Just wanted to be clear.

 

yea, I got that. Thanks for the info. I will check with AT&T for a similiar setup.

[vacruizer]

I guess not, obviously they got a bill from the ship for their minutes used on the ship tower. I haven't used a cell on board so I don't know how it works. But she had bill in hand and was not happy at all. They were explaining to her how it goes through their tower and each call gets charged. Told her the only way not to get charged was to use the ships phone in the room and dial the other room, not her cell.

 

I've always assumed she had her S&S bill in her hand. I guess she could have logged into her phone account from one of the computers and printed off her current usage and that's what was in her hand. I know ours shows up at the end of the day.

 

I was just glad I wasn't her. That was one thick bill.

 

Wonder if the kids were using the ship's in room phones and dialing each other's cells with it. :eek: At 7.99 or 9.99 a minute that could get scary!

[Steve-N-Steph]

If you don't mind me asking I am going on a cruise and I was going to add the 19.99 international emailing to my tmobile plan. So you didn't have any additional charges than for sending or receiving emails? Sounds silly but does it matter if itstates (gprs, edge, wifi, uma) Thanks so much

 

Correct - I had no additional charges. Just make sure that you have your phone set up so you don't receive phone calls or voicemail notifications. With T-Mobile even if you forward all your voice calls to their voicemail and it never rings you will receive the little icon notification on your screen that you have voicemail and you will be charged $4.99 for every one of those you receive. This is why I changed to YouMail voicemail. You have the option to select the types of notification you want for Voicemails, and missed calls (since your phone won't ring - you can see who called even if they didn't leave a message) You can choose email, or text notification. With T-Mobile if you have an unlimited text plan all your incoming texts will be free while on ship and in most foreign countries. Next - if your phone says uma or wifi you are picking up a wireless signal I'm not sure about that as the only wifi you would get on ship would be on carnivals. I turned off my wifi while on ship. At several different times my phone said edge and gma. I never had any problems. Now I never had any emails with big attachments. Just regular text email back and forth and LOTS of it and did not have any additional charges on my bill. If you have anymore questions I would be glad to answer them!

[Steve-N-Steph]

Wonder if the kids were using the ship's in room phones and dialing each other's cells with it. :eek: At 7.99 or 9.99 a minute that could get scary!

 

Wow that makes sense as she had what looked like her S&S bill with her. SCARY I think I might be tempted to leave my kids on the ship to work their bill off. But when the kids cruised with us the first thing I did was collect their cell phone when we got on the ship and put them in the safe. They are good kids, but it's not worth the risk of a HUGE phone bill.

[poobears]

I was soaking in the tub with nothing to think about last night and that was the conclusion I came to. Who ever was in the rooms was calling the cells. They assumed since the cells were on the ship they wouldn't be charged. So she had 4 or 5 pages of room generated calls to cell phones.

 

Can you imagine? They'd just have to keep on board to work it off LOL

[Tbay-eh]

Wonder if the kids were using the ship's in room phones and dialing each other's cells with it. :eek: At 7.99 or 9.99 a minute that could get scary!

 

This is what I was thinking happened. My nephew, 22 at the time and a university student so you would think would know better, had this happen. He called his girlfriend back home and talked for God knows how long but the S&S bill for that alone was over $300.00 - his parents response was "well, he didn't know" and didn't make him pay. My kids would be paying that off pronto. The parents are also in for a rude awakening when they get their cell bill if this is the case as roaming charges will be tacked on to that as well - maybe dependent on their plan. Glad that wasn't us - our cells only come out at port and only if we tag on to a local tower. We always leave the ship info incase of emergency. My philosophy is "no cell, no blackberry, no computer" or I might as well stay at home. I have no problem if others use them as it is their choice. Just don't be beside me by the pool yelling into your cell phone "can you here me now"