Has anyone ever taken their phone on a cruise (in the Caribbean) and had cell coverage? I have a Tilt with ATT service and have "International" turned on, but am wondering if the phone will work on the cruise ship and in the various ports (Bahamas, St. Thomas, etc.) Is there anything I can do to make the odds better?
Mine worked while in port at The Gran Camen. But, I didn't have my current phone, it was an older phone, not the new quad band "world phones".
So, your experience may be different.
yggorf said:
Has anyone ever taken their phone on a cruise (in the Caribbean) and had cell coverage? I have a Tilt with ATT service and have "International" turned on, but am wondering if the phone will work on the cruise ship and in the various ports (Bahamas, St. Thomas, etc.) Is there anything I can do to make the odds better?
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Welcome to the forum
I think this "coverage area" is also limited by your cell provider according to your contract.
On my case, I never tested on a ship, but have been in several places and always having coverage.
Of course this service have a cost.
I{m sure however that sea coverage will be more expensive
Just my thoughts
Well, after thinking about the original question for a sec, the phone won't work while at sea. There are no towers out there!
won't work at sea, but may work at certain ports. you will need to ask at&t about what caribbian cities are roaming covered.
May work at sea using the same technology that they are currrently putting in planes, a pico-cell, which will take the mobile call and then route it via the ships existing satellite connection. Anybodies guess as to the roaming charges though.
Here You Go
http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/24/man-charged-28-000-for-using-data-card-slingbox-to-watch-footb/
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/08/19/tuaw-tip-using-your-iphone-on-a-cruise-ship/2
I know for a fact that some ships have built in cell towers that can be activated once you've left shore. However, I do believe it counts as data roaming, SO BE CAREFUL!! At 2 cents a KB, things can get expensive quickly. This article shows what can happen.
Dave
DaveTheTytnIIGuy said:
I know for a fact that some ships have built in cell towers that can be activated once you've left shore. However, I do believe it counts as data roaming, SO BE CAREFUL!! At 2 cents a KB, things can get expensive quickly. This article shows what can happen.
Dave
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That would be a HUGE shocking bill to get!
But at least the guy didn't have to pay it, but I bet it was a huge hassle to get it all straightened out.
Your telephone will have service on any populated island you go to. Typically you will find carriers like Digicell in the west indies. My knowledge of the northern caribbean is limited, but since the southern (and less developed) countries have decent gsm coverage, you should have no issues when less than 10-20 miles from land. Essentially islands which are within sight of each other should have few coverage gaps if any. When you have a 5 hour cruise over open sea, you will have nothing.
Roaming will depend on your carrier. I use Rogers which has dropped its rates from 5cents/kb to 3.
http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-network/international_roaming
This link will let you select a country, when the little window opens, click the option for a coverage map. International GSM coverage has nothing to do with Rogers, it will just tell you who has coverage where. Obviously ignore the rates, all you can use from this is the map
Well, after searching high and low, I just can't find anyone with recent T-Mo experience around San Diego and surrounding areas. Recently I got the chance to use a new G2 and I was overall impressed with the phone, other than the obvious weird hinge, but anyway, it was the first time I was able to use T-Mobile down here. I was less than impressed.
Downtown was one of the few places I saw HSPA coverage, along with the Mira Mesa area. Anywhere south of downtown and north of Mira Mesa and most places in between, including where I live east of Del Mar were EDGE with spotty HSPA. Speed tests averaged 600 Kbps across the board, with peaks of 1.8 Mbps if I was lucky.
TL;DR: So my question is, is spotty sub-par coverage and slow throughput average for the San Diego area on T-Mobile?
I played around my friend's G2 over the weekend around the college area. He didn't even have 3G reception let alone HSPA+ (I think T-Mobile announced HSPA+ launch in San Diego a month or so ago).
I recently did a search to see about sprint launching new towers because their service is really bipolar in my area(one minute I can download something at more than 1,000kb/sec and then I move a few feet and I'm getting 20kb/sec in some parts of town) and found rumors that they were putting towers ontop of walmarts. This would effectively boost signals around a lot of shopping centers, but I can't find any more recent news about this other than various blogs and message board posts from the summer. So is sprint quietly in cahoots with walmart and increasing coverage by putting up more towers or did the rumors turn out to be false?
as of late last night and speeds picking up today
I was getting LTE indicator on my Lumia 900 in Cuyahoga Falls and North Akron as well last night. However, heading more north today towards Cleveland and then west of Cleveland (Amherst area) just getting 4g signal.
Well, I recently (3 months ago) bought into Sprint, with 3 HTC One's. Where I live, or frankly, anywhere I go at all, my speeds never have topped 5 Mbps. That's when I get lucky. At home, I barely even get proper voice coverage in the afternoons. My average speeds vary between 30Kbps and 500Kbps. My LTE speeds rarely go above 2Mbps.
AT&T on the other hand is supposed to be much better. I know for a fact that AT&T gives me data speeds literally 10x faster than what Sprint gives me at home (actual speed test). That is, if you assume I'm getting anything at all.
Will SoftBank's acquisition of Sprint or the Network Vision upgrades they are doing improve coverage in my area? I'm supposed to get LTE in San Jose, CA, USA (South Bay) by "the end of 2013, at latest". I dunno if I can wait that long. I do get an occasional LTE signal, which means they're working on it, but it's oh so unstable.
What is Sprint's focus? Is it to spread wider to cover more people, or is it to improve upon what little they have right now?
A friend of mine recently had Verizon terminate his contract for free because he wasn't satisfied with the service. Will Sprint do something like this for me? Or should I force roam? I heard this will drop you from your contract and you won't be hit with any charges. Will there be an ETF or will the phones be permanently disabled? Will there be a grace period?
Wherever I look, there are many people saying Sprint sucks, but then there are a handful of people saying that Sprint's technology is far more advanced and it will all be worth it once LTE rollout is complete. I'll probably be holding onto the HTC One for the next 3 years, and I don't want to be stuck on what speeds I have for the price I'm paying. What should I do? I'm currently supposed to be in a "Good 3G/Wimax area", which is disappointing. Will Sprint try to cover me better?
As you can see from this Sensorly data, Sprint technically covers where I live pretty well. But in the 3 months (ish) I've had my phone, I've never gotten any speeds that could compare to Tmobile's HSPA+.
Sprint just sucks, unfortunately. You can be standing on top of their antennas and still have no reception.
Try cspire lol worst carrier ever.
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Even I would like this to happen
Even I'd like to know what's the tentative plan from Sprint to cover whole of San Jose. I've been a long time customer and am getting frustrated with the fact that the speeds from all other carriers is higher than what I get.