cell phone reception question

[CJJSmith]

Does anyone know if my cell phone will work - we are going to the Bahamas (Nassau, CoCo Cay, Key West)... not sure if I will get any reception or not.

 

Thanks!

[robintennis]

I travel every year with my cell....for business reasons.

 

Typically it will not work at sea, however, once in port it does. There are a few ports that I cannot seem to gain access, but only a few.

 

I am from Canada and I use Telus. I phone in advance and have them set up the long distance fees, so I don't go broke using it. Then it will ring and I can call out, again at some ports....the French islands never seem to work.

 

It will also have unlimited service in the states (just back from Orlando in September)...and Mexico.

 

The only thing that doesn't seem to work is text messaging.

 

Good luck with yours....call your service provider to set it up and all should go well.

 

Robin

[mymk4u]

I have Cingular but with an older AT&T plan that gives me coverage in the enire US without roaming. I also have internet service on my phone. We went to Florida (Keys and Canaveral), Freeport, Coco Cay & Coz in Oct. I was surprised to have service in Freeport. I made one quick 10 min call to the States and it cost me $23. Fortunately I had no service while in Mexico. ;) Florida was no problem. Coco Cay is a little island..no cell towers.

 

You can contact your provider for extended coverage. They should be happy to set you up.

 

Have a great trip!

Linda

[maryjohn]

I cruised both the Eastern & Western Caribbean in October. I am from the U.K. with O2 which swithched to Cingular when I arrived in the states.

My phone worked everywhere inlcuding aboard the Navigator. The service was not very good on one of the islands, otherwise the reception was excellent aqll the time - even for texting!

[racephoto]

I have Cingular and my phone worked fine on the ship even at sea. I was on the Majesty last month. They had a brochure stating they had Cingular coverage on the ship but roaming charges might apply. The calls on my bill just look like regular minutes so far, hoping no roaming charges catch up later.

[cusyl]

http://www.mobalrental.com/gsm/handsets.asp?source=0006DN07NMOBWEB

[firstcruise05]

I have Verizon. Before I left I called them to see if I could get coverage in the Bahamas, St. Thomas, or St. Martin (we have kids that we wanted to check on). The Verizon customer service Rep said that I would get service in the Bahamas but not St. Thomas or St. Maarten. That was not the case for me.

 

We got no service in the Bahamas or St. Maarten but we did get excellent service in St. Thomas/St. John.

[Leslie K]

I have Verizon. Before I left I called them to see if I could get coverage in the Bahamas, St. Thomas, or St. Martin (we have kids that we wanted to check on). The Verizon customer service Rep said that I would get service in the Bahamas but not St. Thomas or St. Maarten. That was not the case for me.

 

We got no service in the Bahamas or St. Maarten but we did get excellent service in St. Thomas/St. John.

 

Just curious... what type of bill did you get for calls in St. Thomas... or is it part of national no roaming since St. Thomas is a US territory??

[nrose6]

Contact Telus and ask if you can roam on the BATELCO network. ITs a matter of which handset you have. Keep in mind, it is over $1 per mintute on that network.

[CJJSmith]

Thanks everyone for your great help! I did contact my company (Sprint) and it will charge me 2.25 per minute IF I get service. We plan to email our kids and have their grandmother read the emails to them... or my oldest can read them. My kids are 7, 5 and 3. :)

[racephoto]

Well, don't forget your phone will work fine in Key West. (well it should anyway!) You can buy int'l phone cards before you leave but I have heard they don't always work in the Bahamas. You could look into it though. There were tons of phones right at the pier in Nassau. So really, you could make one call from Nassau and Key West and just email from CoCo Cay.

 

Enjoy your trip!

[PelicanBill]

We were not charged anything excessive when we used Verizon in St. Thomas/St. John.

[The Big Booper]

We were in SXM, Nassau and St. Thomas recently, off the Constellation. Our Verizon reported no service in Nassau and SXM and showed extended network in St. Thomas, not roaming.

[marcmedic]

Had Cingular on our last NOS cruise. Worked great from the room. Just got the bill. For 4 short calls home and 2 short calls to work the total was 23.00. Not bad at all. Reception was OK. Had to be pretty quiet to hear everything but much better than 7.00 a minute to use the ship's phone.

[Mike & Sue]

Just curious... what type of bill did you get for calls in St. Thomas... or is it part of national no roaming since St. Thomas is a US territory??

 

Verizon $.69 per minute, not included in any plan. Great reception from St. Thom., like being next door. A lot cheaper thant ship phones and better than trying to play around with pay phones in port.

[racephoto]

I had to go online and check my Cingular bill again and yeah, I was just charged regular minutes for the at-sea calls. Some of them were even mobile-to-mobile minutes so didn't count. I did not, however, use the phone while docked in Nassau so I don't know if I would have hit the Batelco towers and gotten charged roaming rates. Here's the thing I found on CIngular about the phone service, I did not realize it was just being rolled out.

http://cingular.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=848

[firstcruise05]

Just curious... what type of bill did you get for calls in St. Thomas... or is it part of national no roaming since St. Thomas is a US territory??

 

I did get charged extra in St. Thomas. It appears to be about 99 cents a minute on my bill. We talked for total of 39 minutes while in St. Thomas/St. john (that was the sum of many calls) and spent $38.61 on those calls.

 

For us it was a bargain compared to the 7.99 that the ship charges a minute.

[RN7997]

I did this same cruise last April and I have sprint to. I did not get service in Nassau or cococay. We just made our calls from Miami and Key West.