Internet on Canada & New England Cruises

[MattAu]

First timer on a Canada & New England cruise.  Will I be needing wi-fi package or will my Canadian data plan and roaming while in the U.S. be sufficient?  How far off coast do we go?  Anyone know if we will have cellular (Rogers) coverage?

[1025cruise]

You will not have cell coverage while at sea.

[chengkp75]

Basically, if you can't distinguish buildings on shore (not just see land), you won't have cell service anywhere at sea (20 miles is about it), and along northern Maine and New Brunswick, it gets even worse.

[*Miss G*]

I have a North America plan but kept it in airplane mode when we were at sea.  I found that was plenty sufficient due to the number of ports, but I am not tied to technology when I don’t need to work.  Check your provider for Cellular at Sea coverage/charges because that’s what your phone is going to connect to once it loses local services.  Turn off data roaming if you don’t want it to perform updates and synchronization in the background.

[Mary229]

You can visit Rogers web page and see what they charge for international roaming.   At sea you will not have cellular service. There are no antennas out there

[Fouremco]

Depending on which cruise you are taking, your only sea days may be in the St. Lawrence, where you will have at least some service during the course of the day. Otherwise, you'll be in port every day, mostly within Canada. Rogers charges $12 a day for US roaming for the one or two ports there. So for DW and I, with no requirement for 24 hour access, we found no need for a wifi package. We'd draft emails during the evening and then send them while in port the next day. As we usually were in port by breakfast time, we'd go through our incoming overnight mail while eating. On the other hand, if you need to have 24/7 access for business or other reasons, then you'll need both a ship's wifi package plus a US roaming package for a couple of days.