No Cellular Service with AT&T iPhone on Silhouette with OnWaves (Threads Merged)

[Arubalisa]

For those who are worried about emergency calls from home, there is direct calling to the ship by calling 877-266-1020. From outside the U.S., they can call 732-335-3296. The cost is $7.95 USD a minute.

One year my parents were on a transatlantic when a relative passed away. :( I could have phoned, but did not know exact times which they would be in their cabin. It was extremely easy for me to send a fax to the ship with all of the details which I needed to get across, which was then slipped under their door. :)

[garycarla]

One year my parents were on a transatlantic when a relative passed away. :( I could have phoned, but did not know exact times which they would be in their cabin. It was extremely easy for me to send a fax to the ship with all of the details which I needed to get across, which was then slipped under their door. :)

 

Personally, I think that sending this information is wrong. There is only one thing the people on the cruise can do - worry. They can do NOTHING. They are on a T/A and will not be in port for days. If it was me, or my close family, I would not bother them until the arrived in the states. If a member of my own family were to ruin someones cruise because I croaked, I would be pissed, and would find a way to haunt them.

 

Just sayin.

[crslover]

We were on the Eclipse transatlantic oct. 27. Our daughter lives in NYC and was affected by the hurricane. We have iPhone 4S and 5. No service from the 5 and very spotty with the 4s. This has never happened before. Celebrity was aware of the poor cell service and provided calls to check on our family. No excuse for on waves lack of connectivity. Poor Internet and cell service caused a lot of stress during the hurricane.

[uktog]

For those who are worried about emergency calls from home, there is direct calling to the ship by calling 877-266-1020. From outside the U.S., they can call 732-335-3296. The cost is $7.95 USD a minute.

 

Whilst I appreciate this is an option for some, it is not feasible for us to use that for those at home keeping in touch. Older people calling us need to be able just to push our number that is programmed into their phones. In one case, they do not have a credit card that would need to be given to connect the call, the pushing of all the various buttons would confuse them and the cost would terrify them - and they then have to go through third parties to speak to us.

[sheffield]

Just got off the New Years sailing on Silhouette and neither my husband or I could connect to On Waves. I have an Iphone 4 and he has an Iphone 5. The guy in the Internet room said he did not know of any problems with Iphones. I spoke to AT & T when we were ashore and was told they are having major problems on Celebrity ships with customers who use Iphones and were attempting to work with Celebrity about the problem. Have any of you been able to contact Celebrity about this?

It was a problem for us as we have a son in the Marines and elderly parents in England so we hate to be out of cell phone contact. I did not have this problem on the Equinox in Europe last May but I think they used Cellular at Sea not On Waves. We are sailing again in Europe this May but on the Silhouette again and I am worried we will have the same problem.

[Lsimon]

UPDATE Jan-25-2013:

I received a call Celebrity customer service in response to the email's I'd sent them. The individual indicated they'd been trying to research the issue but were not getting far. They'd been trying to contact OnWaves but could not get through by voice or email - which seemed odd to me since they are business partners on this.

 

Se told me that she had called AT&T and that AT&T felt it was an issue with the iPhone 5 related to the iPhone 5's attempt to make an LTE/4G connection. She said that AT&T told her that turning off the LTE setting when on the ship would correct this. I told her that this doesn't sound right to me as we are able to connect to non 4G/LTE systems on land when traveling and also because we'd heard from individuals with iPhone 4 who could not connect as well and that the customer relations clerk on board had told me that there were similar reports from other brands of phones. But I also admitted that since I was not on board that I could not verify if this "fix" would work or not.

 

She told me she would continue to pursue a response from OnWaves and email me if she did.

 

I also asked her what ships OnWaves is on (as opposed to the other vendor Celebrity uses) and she told me that OnWaves is only on Eclipse and Silhouette. Unfortunately for us our next cruise is on Eclipse so we may run into problems there.

 

If anyone has any experiences relating to this or plans on sailing Eclipse or Silhouette with an iPhone 5 soon I'd love to know how things are working.

[LOP]

You can try communicating with them directly, here is the link below:.

 

Keep us posted please.

 

http://www.on-waves.com/node/255

[k9x8]

Not AT&T, but Verizon. When I called to make sure international roaming was good to go, I was told my iPhone 4 (3G) wouldn't work in Europe, so they sent me an Android loaner, programmed with my number, at no additional charge. Worked fine, whether on ship or on land.

[sheffield]

Just got off the New Years sailing on Silhouette and neither my husband or I could connect to On Waves. I have an Iphone 4 and he has an Iphone 5. The guy in the Internet room said he did not know of any problems with Iphones. I spoke to AT & T when we were ashore and was told they are having major problems on Celebrity ships with customers who use Iphones and were attempting to work with Celebrity about the problem. Have any of you been able to contact Celebrity about this?

It was a problem for us as we have a son in the Marines and elderly parents in England so we hate to be out of cell phone contact. I did not have this problem on the Equinox in Europe last May but I think they used Cellular at Sea not On Waves. We are sailing again in Europe this May but on the Silhouette again and I am worried we will have the same problem.

 

 

Finally heard back from Celebrity today with a very unsatisfactory answer. She said she had not heard about this before(!!!) but would forward our complaint to an operational team who would research the matter. There was no mention of her following up with me, however, I will be following up with her in a few weeks. As I said before, we are sailing on Silhouette again in May and being out of touch for us is very worrying.

[sheffield]

Forgot to say we had the same thing with both the iPhone 4 and 5 so the comment about what to do with the 5 would not have solved our problem.

[LOP]

Finally heard back from Celebrity today with a very unsatisfactory answer. She said she had not heard about this before(!!!) but would forward our complaint to an operational team who would research the matter. There was no mention of her following up with me, however, I will be following up with her in a few weeks. As I said before, we are sailing on Silhouette again in May and being out of touch for us is very worrying.

 

 

I am with you there...being able to keep in touch via phone and internet allows me to travel/cruise while still running my business...otherwise I would be stuck in the office or nearby at least. Hope this issue is resolved soon.

[kittenkboo]

Could someone explain what OnWaves is and associated costs? Has anyone used their iPhone tether feature for their iPad while on the ship?

 

Thanks

[Lsimon]

Could someone explain what OnWaves is and associated costs? Has anyone used their iPhone tether feature for their iPad while on the ship?

 

Thanks

 

Celebrity partners with two different companies to provide cellular phone service at sea. OnWaves is one of them and from what I understand they are on the Silhouette and the Eclipse. Wireless Maritime Services (a/k/a Cellular At Sea) is the other provider and I think they are on all of Celebrity's other ships.

 

The actual cost of service depends on your carrier not these providers and nor Celebrity. You can find the rates on your providers web site under cruise ships and/or international roaming. For AT&T the rate for phone calls have recently been $2.49/minute and $0.50 for outgoing text messages. Incoming texts on AT&T are charged at your home rate so there has been no charge in the past if you have unlimited texting at home. I'm qualifying these rates as "have been" as I think there might have recently been a change.

 

Data usage is both simple and complicated. The complicated part is that the rates are very very very expensive (I might not have included enough "very"'s). With AT&T there is no international roaming data package that applies to on-board service at sea so there is no break from the rates. Some other carriers cover the service in their international roaming plans. The simple part of all this is that it probably makes no difference as I've heard from others that the cellular data service on board generally doesn't work or is so slow that it is worthless. Apparently the on-board cellular systems are designed for voice and not for data. So much for your prospects of using the iPhone tether feature on board.

[Doctor24]

I understand that Onwaves is on the Reflection also. Don't see how the Celebrity rep has not gotten either a voicemail or email response. I personnally spoke to an Onwaves tech and received an email response within the same day. Celebrity is giving someone the run-around. The Onwaves tech told me that the Verizon Android phones would work at sea but I didn't ask about the AT&T Iphones 4 & 5

[Lsimon]

I have two bits of conflicting information:

 

1. Following up on a message I left on an Eclipse roll call, two people who just finished an Eclipse cruise have emailed me to let me know that their iPhones (one an iPhone 4S and one an iPhone 5) worked OK on the Eclipse.

 

2. I just received an email from OnWaves responding to an email I sent them last week. They indicated that the problem exists on all Celebrity ships they service, that it relates to specific phone models, including the iPhone 5 and 4S and others, and it does not relate to a specific service provider (such as AT&T). Below is the full text of OnWave's response:

We are very sorry to hear about your recent experience with our networks onboard the Celebrity Silhouette. We are aware that there is an issue with iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 that we are working hard to repair with our equipment vendors. Unfortunately we do not have a remedy for the situation at current point in time. As far as we know this issue is affecting iPhone 4s/5 and some Samsung models on all of the Celebrity vessels that we serve. This issue is related to phone models, not service provider. I apologize for the inconvenience that this caused you during your last trip.

 

I sincerely hope that the system will be functioning properly before your next trip, I would be happy to notify you as soon as we have the issue resolved.

 

I really don't know where that leaves everyone. It doesn't help much other than to know that they're acknowledging the problem. Based on the emails I received from the other Cruise Critic members (thanks to both of you) I am hopeful that our phones will work on on upcoming Eclipse cruise in March.

 

If anyone has any further info, or more recent experience on the Eclipse, Silhouette or Reflection with OnWaves and an iPhone 5 and 4S please post about it here.

[BigDaddy2002]

We just returned from last week's Reflection cruise. I have an iPhone 4S and my wife has an iPhone 4. I usually carried my phone to be able to access ship's wi-fi, which mostly worked well. At no time did I ever see a cellular signal. This only occurred to me this morning though we arrived back on Saturday. It also occurred to me that twice on the cruise my wife's phone (which had been left on and used on shore) inexplicably downloaded dozens of her emails while at sea, despite never connecting it to Ship's wi-fi. I chalked that up to her phone picking up a random shore signal. It now seems much more likely that she connected to the ship's cellular network.

 

I would definitely have noticed if my phone had ever connected as I ran thru more than 250 minutes of ship's wi-fi in average chunks of 2-3 minutes per time.

[Lsimon]

We just returned from last week's Reflection cruise. I have an iPhone 4S and my wife has an iPhone 4. I usually carried my phone to be able to access ship's wi-fi, which mostly worked well. At no time did I ever see a cellular signal. This only occurred to me this morning though we arrived back on Saturday. It also occurred to me that twice on the cruise my wife's phone (which had been left on and used on shore) inexplicably downloaded dozens of her emails while at sea, despite never connecting it to Ship's wi-fi. I chalked that up to her phone picking up a random shore signal. It now seems much more likely that she connected to the ship's cellular network.

 

I would definitely have noticed if my phone had ever connected as I ran thru more than 250 minutes of ship's wi-fi in average chunks of 2-3 minutes per time.

 

If you stopped at St Thomas or San Juan you would have been in home territory and not roaming which might have accounted for your wife's phone receiving data if it was not turned off.

[BigDaddy2002]

If you stopped at St Thomas or San Juan you would have been in home territory and not roaming which might have accounted for your wife's phone receiving data if it was not turned off.

 

I considered that. We stopped in San Juan on day 2 of the cruise. Sometime during day 6 or 7, both sea days, her phone downloaded more than 50 emails. At the time, I considered that perhaps it had occurred while we slept and the ship passed close to Puerto Rico. But it seems more likely that the phone connected to ship wifi.

 

Either way, I never saw a cellular connection on my phone. Nearly 5 years ago on a Med cruise on the Voyager of the Seas, many of us in the group used our phones to communicate with each other all week - on ship and land. It's sad that so many years later, with all of the technological advancement, that a new Celebrity ship can't have cell coverage.

[someguyfl]

I considered that. We stopped in San Juan on day 2 of the cruise. Sometime during day 6 or 7, both sea days, her phone downloaded more than 50 emails. At the time, I considered that perhaps it had occurred while we slept and the ship passed close to Puerto Rico. But it seems more likely that the phone connected to ship wifi.

 

Either way, I never saw a cellular connection on my phone. Nearly 5 years ago on a Med cruise on the Voyager of the Seas, many of us in the group used our phones to communicate with each other all week - on ship and land. It's sad that so many years later, with all of the technological advancement, that a new Celebrity ship can't have cell coverage.

 

I was on the Feb 2-9 Reflection sailing as well.

On day 6/7 we were close enough to Bahamas to have a working signal. I actually made a couple of phone calls using Bahamas TeleCom. On-Waves worked for my Verizon iPad 3, but not my AT&T iPhone 4S (nor my fiance's)

[tonyzee]

From: Thorir Tryggvason

Date: February 12, 2013, 9:46:07 AM EST

To:

Subject: Re: Unable to use iphone 5 on Celebrity Silhouette

Hello Mr. Zee

We are very sorry to hear about the problems that you had onboard the Celebrity Silhouette recently. It has come to our attention that there is an issue with iPhone 5 onboard the Celebrity Silhouette. This problem is related to radio and back-haul communication issues and we are working with the manufacturer of the radios and the manufacturer of the onboard equipment to provide a solution. This issue affects user with iPhone 4S and 5, as well as Samsung Galaxy models, this does not affect older iPhone models such as 3, 3G, 3GS and 4.

 

You say that you are cruising again, next month, but you don't say which vessel you will be on. We hope to have provided a solution to the problem before that and I would be happy to let you know as soon as we have a solution. If you will be sailing on any of the following vessels: Eclipse, Silhouette or Reflection then you might run into issues if we haven't been able to repair the problem. Please rest assured that we are taking every possible step to remedy the situation as fast as possible.

 

Again, our sincere apologies for causing you inconvenience onboard.

 

/Thorir

[sheffield]

From: Thorir Tryggvason

Date: February 12, 2013, 9:46:07 AM EST

To:

Subject: Re: Unable to use iphone 5 on Celebrity Silhouette

Hello Mr. Zee

We are very sorry to hear about the problems that you had onboard the Celebrity Silhouette recently. It has come to our attention that there is an issue with iPhone 5 onboard the Celebrity Silhouette. This problem is related to radio and back-haul communication issues and we are working with the manufacturer of the radios and the manufacturer of the onboard equipment to provide a solution. This issue affects user with iPhone 4S and 5, as well as Samsung Galaxy models, this does not affect older iPhone models such as 3, 3G, 3GS and 4.

 

You say that you are cruising again, next month, but you don't say which vessel you will be on. We hope to have provided a solution to the problem before that and I would be happy to let you know as soon as we have a solution. If you will be sailing on any of the following vessels: Eclipse, Silhouette or Reflection then you might run into issues if we haven't been able to repair the problem. Please rest assured that we are taking every possible step to remedy the situation as fast as possible.

 

Again, our sincere apologies for causing you inconvenience onboard.

 

/Thorir

 

I have just emailed Mr Tryggvason to let him know that the same problem is also affecting the iPhone 4. we sailed on the Silhouette over the new year and had no service on our iPhones 4 and 5.

[youwash]

We are sailing on Silhouette in a little over a week. Would we have better luck using an older phone-not any type of Iphone? We have a Casio Ravine with Verizon that is an extra phone since my husband now has a company phone. As usual "Murphys Law" has struck and a project that was to have been finished will now be in a critical last week just as we sail. Am I understanding it correct that if he has international calling he will be able to use that in the ports? (Grand Cayman, Cozomel, Jamica and Labadee) Most worried about our first full sea day?!

[LOP]

Family members just returned off 14 day Eclipse Caribbean cruise last Saturday. They have an iphone 4s and a basic old motorola flip phone.

 

They NEVER had service while on the ship and at sea. If they neared a port, then they picked up cell tower service.

 

I have emailed the captain's club in hopes the message will reach the appropriate parties to address this situation.

 

Many of us must remain in touch with our businesses while on vacation...the downside to being an entrepreneur, the plus side is technology allows us to travel extensively when a few years ago, that was not possible.

 

Let's hope RCCL and OnWaves fix this issue.

 

If I receive a reply, I will share here.

[tonyzee]

Family members just returned off 14 day Eclipse Caribbean cruise last Saturday. They have an iphone 4s and a basic old motorola flip phone.

 

They NEVER had service while on the ship and at sea. If they neared a port, then they picked up cell tower service.

 

I have emailed the captain's club in hopes the message will reach the appropriate parties to address this situation.

 

Many of us must remain in touch with our businesses while on vacation...the downside to being an entrepreneur, the plus side is technology allows us to travel extensively when a few years ago, that was not possible.

 

Let's hope RCCL and OnWaves fix this issue.

 

If I receive a reply, I will share here.

 

Thanks.

[ghstudio]

I wish I thought that Celebrity even cared.....but my guess is that some lower level person is assigned to get this working and it's not considered a significant issue. i doubt that Bayley even knows there is a problem....yet passengers rely on the service being there and working.

 

I have no idea how to get Celebrity to start to focus on passenger issues....they just show no interest. If it's financial...they're all over it....if it has to do with their web site (customer facing) or phone service, they just don't care...you've booked a cabin...they're happy as larks.

 

Someone tell me I'm wrong.... (and it would be nice if it was some executive from Celebrity who responded).