iPhones and International Calling in the Caribbean

[harryw]

I haven’t been on a cruise in several years so I have forgotten

the limitations of my iPhone in the Caribbean. I have a Verizon plan with no special travel add ons.

Will I be able to send and receive calls to and from the US with no surcharges? Will there be a blackout when  at sea?

Will I need to change my Settings?

[marieps]

Put you phone in airplane mode while on board.  Without an international plan from your carrier you will be charged mightily for calls but from St. Thomas and Puerto Rico, as they are US territories.

[mauibabes]

Quick, consider a switch to T Mobile 👍😇  You can get a new iPhone 15 and pay less for even better service is my experience and a senior discount, check it out.    I believe it makes no difference whether an iPhone or Android and I was offered phone call minutes at $.25 and required no extra calling plan. If on line and communicating with another iPhone, you can FaceTime and as I recall it cost nothing. Chatted with my grandson showing him pictures of a spewing volcano from the South China Sea or somewhere near Indonesia. 
Definitely, keep your phone in Airplane Mode while on the ship unless you like hefty phone bills. 
Mauibabes

[PhD-iva]

I have Verizon. You have to opt into their international calling plan. Then you are charged $10 a day when you use data or text or calling outside of the US. I think Mexico and Canada is five dollars a day. It does add up. 

[edgee]

3 hours ago, PhD-iva said:

I have Verizon. You have to opt into their international calling plan. Then you are charged $10 a day when you use data or text or calling outside of the US. I think Mexico and Canada is five dollars a day. It does add up. 

Mexico and Canada are free with most Verizon plans but you must enable international calling. Most other countries are flat ten bucks a day if you enable international calling and you can use your phone just like in the US except for some limitations on data, but they allow you enough for most people's use in one day. No charge AFAIK to enable international calling. I do not pay a fee per month extra for it under my plan.

Edited November 10, 2023 by edgee

[Dwtlion]

Put your phone in airplane mode and  then select wi-fi calling and you will pay nothing. Did this all over Europe this Fall on Vista. 

[WESTEAST]

We use WhatsApp mostly for texting but you can call as well. Download the app, put the phone in airplane mode and select wi-fi calling. We do get complimentary wi-fi which helps. 

[Harry Lake]

6 hours ago, PhD-iva said:

I have Verizon. You have to opt into their international calling plan. Then you are charged $10 a day when you use data or text or calling outside of the US. I think Mexico and Canada is five dollars a day. It does add up. 

I used that in France earlier this year. Mainly for making reservations at restaurants 🙂

[ORV]

17 hours ago, mauibabes said:

Quick, consider a switch to T Mobile 👍😇  You can get a new iPhone 15 and pay less for even better service is my experience and a senior discount, check it out.    I believe it makes no difference whether an iPhone or Android and I was offered phone call minutes at $.25 and required no extra calling plan. If on line and communicating with another iPhone, you can FaceTime and as I recall it cost nothing. Chatted with my grandson showing him pictures of a spewing volcano from the South China Sea or somewhere near Indonesia. 
Definitely, keep your phone in Airplane Mode while on the ship unless you like hefty phone bills. 
Mauibabes

Another bonus that T Mobile users have is free Wifi on certain airlines. I know I have it free on AA & I think Delta, I'm not sure of what all airlines we get it on. This is actually a nice perk. We also get free Netflix with it and that Text & Data pretty much all over the world is great.  Biggest mistake I made was not switching to them sooner. 

[mauibabes]

@ORV

👍 major DITTO.  We were a little slow on the switch from ATT but did so about 5 years ago. Even added grandsons to our plan for only $10 each per month. Now married, they do not want to leave parents and grandparents plans, it costs tooo much. 😇

Mauibabes

[WildWanderers]

Hi All,

 

We remove our simcards at the Ottawa airport, download a ubigi e-simcard for the Caribbean, for use as soon as we arrive in the Caribbean.  In our experience, it is only in the rare port where the e-simcard does not work (e.g., in the Bahamas), such that we have no telephony but all other functionality through the ship's wifi.  It worked well in the Caribbean last year, and we used it successfully in Europe as well.

 

We remove our physical simcards only as a precaution.  Although you can set your cellphone up to use only the e-simcard and not your physical simcard, we are afraid of the exorbitant Canadian roaming charges we would incur if ever the setting slipped over to the physical simcard.

 

 

It costs $17USD for a month for each of our cellphones, so this is quite reasonable.

 

Hoping this is useful.

 

Cheers,

Greg of the WildWanderers

 

[Snaefell3]

As @Dwtlion said, use WiFi Calling when aboard ship.   It's been available since iPhone5 (2013).

 

Instead of connecting to your provider through the ship's cellphone "tower" with it's piratical rates, it connects to your provider via the internet at no extra charge.  You need a WiFi connection (aboard O, that's included) and a cellphone provider who accepts calls via the internet (AFAIK, all US providers do).

 

iPhone: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/make-calls-using-wi-fi-iph78f4697ca/ios

 

(Just so us Android folks don't feel excluded: https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/2811843?hl=en)

 

Two caveats:

1) Your ship has to have enough available bandwidth on its satellite relay for an audio connection.

2) Keep checking that your phone is still in Airplane Mode (turning Airplane Mode ON will turn WiFi OFF, but turning WiFi back ON won't turn Airplane Mode OFF).  Calling, receiving calls, and texting work exactly the same when WiFi Calling, so you won't know the price without looking.

Edited November 11, 2023 by Snaefell3
(Forgot about the bandwidth issue)

[Cliff-FLL]

@ORV @mauibabes

I'm with you all on this.  When I had AT&T, I had to pay $60 per month for international service and then pay 35 cents per minute for calls.  The $60 each month got me texts and some data, though I don't recall exactly how much.  If we both wanted to have international dialing, that made it $120 extra for each month we were outside North America (plus 35 cents per minute).

On T-Mobile, international connectivity is included.  Internationally, we each have unlimited texts, 5GB of high-speed data (and then unlimited slow-speed data), and calls at 25 cents per minute.  All this without paying a $120 per month access fee.

[bob brown]

On 11/9/2023 at 5:11 PM, mauibabes said:

Quick, consider a switch to T Mobile 👍😇  You can get a new iPhone 15 and pay less for even better service is my experience and a senior discount, check it out.    I believe it makes no difference whether an iPhone or Android and I was offered phone call minutes at $.25 and required no extra calling plan. If on line and communicating with another iPhone, you can FaceTime and as I recall it cost nothing. Chatted with my grandson showing him pictures of a spewing volcano from the South China Sea or somewhere near Indonesia. 
Definitely, keep your phone in Airplane Mode while on the ship unless you like hefty phone bills. 
Mauibabes

Agree with all of this.  The one advantage of the international plan on VZW is if you need to do a lot of voice calling, (more than 40 minutes), not using wifi...the $10. per day gives unlimited voice calling, no per minute charge.  As said, the $10. charge is only made on days you actually use it.

[Charles4515]

10 hours ago, Cliff-FLL said:

I'm with you all on this.  When I had AT&T, I had to pay $60 per month for international service and then pay 35 cents per minute for calls.  The $60 each month got me texts and some data, though I don't recall exactly how much.  If we both wanted to have international dialing, that made it $120 extra for each month we were outside North America (plus 35 cents per minute).

Those days are over though. AT&T now has the $10 a day travel passes. Mexico, Canada and 19 Latin American are included and don't cost anything. As OP is on Verizon they only need $10 travel passes in port if they want to have service in ports. At sea they can use WiFi calling if they purchase internet. Whether they are on Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T Wi Fi calling would be what they want.  Switching to T-Mobile make no difference. 

[Charles4515]

On 11/9/2023 at 4:11 PM, mauibabes said:

Quick, consider a switch to T Mobile 👍😇  You can get a new iPhone 15 and pay less for even better service is my experience

That's nice but in my experience T-Mobile has poorer service. I tried it at home and poor signal. You can't make generizations as service varies by location. All the carriers have some bad coverage areas. Since AT&T runs FirstNet, the nationwide service for first responders they tend to have a better network coverage than T-Mobile. in the US. T-Mobile is good for international travelers but I spend much more time at home than traveling out of the US. 

Edited November 11, 2023 by Charles4515

[Jockocruiser]

2 hours ago, Charles4515 said:

That's nice but in my experience T-Mobile has poorer service. I tried it at home and poor signal. You can't make generizations as service varies by location. All the carriers have some bad coverage areas. Since AT&T runs FirstNet, the nationwide service for first responders they tend to have a better network coverage than T-Mobile. in the US. T-Mobile is good for international travelers but I spend much more time at home than traveling out of the US. 

Wifi calling from home?

[Charles4515]

25 minutes ago, Jockocruiser said:

Wifi calling from home?

I live in a multi unit condo. I need coverage in the hallways, lobbies, parking garage, pool. Elevators. There is wifi in the common owners lounge near the HOA office but that's about as far as it reaches.

Edited November 11, 2023 by Charles4515

[Snaefell3]

54 minutes ago, Jockocruiser said:

Wifi calling from home?

Sure, but generally it is a case of "Why bother?"

 

If you have lousy cellphone coverage plus good WiFi coverage within your home it makes sense, but otherwise routing via WiFi ticks against your home internet data cap, while via cellphone towers doesn't.

 

I don't claim to be Apple-literate, but on Android you can set up to allow both towers and WiFi, and give preference to one or the other if both are available.

[shepherd really]

18 hours ago, Snaefell3 said:

Sure, but generally it is a case of "Why bother?"

 

If you have lousy cellphone coverage plus good WiFi coverage within your home it makes sense, but otherwise routing via WiFi ticks against your home internet data cap, while via cellphone towers doesn't.

 

I don't claim to be Apple-literate, but on Android you can set up to allow both towers and WiFi, and give preference to one or the other if both are available.

Why bother? Because some of us live in rural dead zones without cell service and use Wi-Fi calling exclusively at home.  And I don't have a data cap on my home fiberoptic internet.  

 

Basically, everyone has different needs and that leads to different decisions as to what works best for them.

 

And yes, Apple phones switch seamlessly between Wi-Fi and cell service once you set it up.

[Charles4515]

1 hour ago, shepherd really said:

Basically, everyone has different needs and that leads to different decisions as to what works best for them.

I agree with this. Some super fans of one carrier seem to think one size fits all. I love international travel but my life is mainly at home and the neighboring area. 

[Snaefell3]

3 hours ago, shepherd really said:

Why bother? Because some of us live in rural dead zones without cell service and use Wi-Fi calling exclusively at home.

::scratches head::

 

I believe I said "generally" and "[i]f you have lousy cellphone coverage ... it makes sense".  Do not 90% of folks have to put up without the benefits of rural life (but with good cellphone coverage 😉 )?

 

Thanks for the word from Apple-land.  I thought so, but wasn't sure.

[harryw]

I just checked my Verizon Plan, and it turns out that because we purchased

new iPhones 8 months ago, we have each accumulated 8 free days of their Travel Pass.

Since we will be on a 10 day cruise, it will be basically free.

  Could someone clarify, that on sea days, the phones can’t be used unless we purchase

the O internet package? 

[Harry Lake]

1 minute ago, harryw said:

I just checked my Verizon Plan, and it turns out that because we purchased

new iPhones 8 months ago, we have each accumulated 8 free days of their Travel Pass.

Since we will be on a 10 day cruise, it will be basically free.

  Could someone clarify, that on sea days, the phones can’t be used unless we purchase

the O internet package? 

And, unless one is working while traveling, why do you need your phone at all. When we were in France I used mine two or three times to call  restaurant for a res.

[basor]

17 minutes ago, harryw said:

I just checked my Verizon Plan, and it turns out that because we purchased

new iPhones 8 months ago, we have each accumulated 8 free days of their Travel Pass.

Since we will be on a 10 day cruise, it will be basically free.

  Could someone clarify, that on sea days, the phones can’t be used unless we purchase

the O internet package? 

Purchase???  You will receive 2 free WIFI accounts per cabin to which you connect your phones (in Airplane mode) and can do everything including WIFI calling.