Cell Phone + Plan for Cruise Ship long-term

Khavall

Ok, so long story short:

I'm a professional musician, and I'm currently working Cruise ships. My current contract ends November 3, but I'll be taking another one after that, and probably I'll be doing it for a while. Most of it is pretty excellent, but there is the one problem of internet, which even with the crew discount on internet, it's still relatively expensive to use(460 minute card for $40). Since I still like to stay connected and be able to check my email and all that, I'd kind of prefer to be a little more constantly connected. When in port, if I don't have IPM(A requirement that there has to be a minimum number of crew members on board, and so the musicians rotate), I can normally hit up a coffee shop or somewhere that has free wifi and use that in large batches, but while on the sea(which is normally 2-3 days a week, but on this contract there's one week where we have sea days 6 days in one week), there's no coffee shop down the street. However, I do get cell phone service almost everywhere, save my cabin, and I've even seen some people getting service in their cabin. The obvious solution then is to just make the move to a smartphone with tethering and oh hey I have unlimited internet without having to buy the cards and budget my internet time like crazy. The problem there is that, say, even when I'm doing an Alaskan cruise, which I'm doing now, there's a lot of time that's spent as roaming.

So basically, what I'm looking for is some information about any sort of international data plan. I'll probably look into it more and see about getting it in between contracts, but I know nothing about them really. I've looked around a bit and haven't really found that much... I've heard that T-Mobile is probably best for it, but I'm not sure and haven't had much success trying to look around their site in limited amounts of time.

What I'd like to know is:

• Does anyone have any experience with international data plans?
• Is there a carrier I should specifically go to or avoid?
• What kind of cost am I looking at? Would it just be smarter to stick with my current basic plan and buy the cards?
• Is there a specific phone I should be looking into for something like this?
• How much would all of this change if, say, I was going to Europe versus Carribean or New Zealand, or wherever?

Thanks!

mcdermott

Ugh...I'm not sure there's necessarily anything for you. The service you are getting is (likely) through your actual ship*, which is (from what I can tell) its own country code (per line, at least). And I don't think they sell "plans" for those "countries," nor do I think any plans treat them as anything but roaming (in which case you pay $rape).

Even a lot of the prepaid options and special "international plans" just offer discounted rates, and many/most don't seem to cover cruise ships. Maybe somebody else can find better, or perhaps you can ask some shipmates? I get the feeling, though, that you're basically hosed; those cellular access points on the ship are basically there to rape the passengers, and they're good at it. I'll be unsurprised if the packages you can buy through the ship for phone/internet are about as good a deal as you can get.


* - Except when in port, obviously.

archonwarp

international data is universally terrible. Most us carriers charge between $ 1 to $ 2 dollars per megabyte, which is terrible. Verizon does have some decent alaskan coverage, so you may want to call them up and check out their rates foyer your case. Honestly, your best bet is probably to keep the cruise ship plan you have now.

Khavall

So basically, nothing. Awesome. I guess I'll probably keep what I have now. I know my roommate actually doesn't have international data but here in alaska we spend 5 days of 7 per cruise in ports, so we tend to be fine.

For the most part I probably wouldn't use the data while at sea, since coverage is kind of wonky, but in ports it'd be nice, which really is a majority of the time.

Or maybe I'll just deal with the lack of internet as the one problem with this gig

archonwarp

Khavall wrote: »

So basically, nothing. Awesome. I guess I'll probably keep what I have now. I know my roommate actually doesn't have international data but here in alaska we spend 5 days of 7 per cruise in ports, so we tend to be fine.

For the most part I probably wouldn't use the data while at sea, since coverage is kind of wonky, but in ports it'd be nice, which really is a majority of the time.

Or maybe I'll just deal with the lack of internet as the one problem with this gig

If you'll be in a major city in Alaska, you can probably use a Verizon Wireless Prepaid Aircrard, which will get you something like 5 Gigs for $80 /month. Not great, but maybe good enough?

Khavall

archonwarp wrote: »

Khavall wrote: »

So basically, nothing. Awesome. I guess I'll probably keep what I have now. I know my roommate actually doesn't have international data but here in alaska we spend 5 days of 7 per cruise in ports, so we tend to be fine.

For the most part I probably wouldn't use the data while at sea, since coverage is kind of wonky, but in ports it'd be nice, which really is a majority of the time.

Or maybe I'll just deal with the lack of internet as the one problem with this gig

If you'll be in a major city in Alaska, you can probably use a Verizon Wireless Prepaid Aircrard, which will get you something like 5 Gigs for $80 /month. Not great, but maybe good enough?

Hm.... Yeah I might look into that. $80/mo would get me 920 minutes of the shipboard though so that would probably be just as reasonable. The thing is, for instance, in two weeks we go down through the panama canal and transition into the carribean, so then that would be a little less useful anyways.

I guess I'll just have to keep using the shipboard and try to avoid using it too much