Cingular International or Phone Card?

[Details]

We will cruising Caribbean next month. We only have two port days. One is in St. Thomas and other is St. Marten. We would like to be able to call home and check on daughter in these ports. Cingular can activate international calling for free and then calls are billed at $2.49/min. (We would have to remember to turn off phone so as to not incur charges from others that might call and leave a voice mail or answering a wrong number.)

 

Would it be more cost effective to purchase an international card and use pay phones in port? Thanks in advance.

[Hopes4]

We will cruising Caribbean next month. We only have two port days. One is in St. Thomas and other is St. Marten. We would like to be able to call home and check on daughter in these ports. Cingular can activate international calling for free and then calls are billed at $2.49/min. (We would have to remember to turn off phone so as to not incur charges from others that might call and leave a voice mail or answering a wrong number.)

 

Would it be more cost effective to purchase an international card and use pay phones in port? Thanks in advance.

 

Im taking my Cingular phone with me. Do you realise you will have to pay for voice mail left on your phone no matter if your phone is turned on or not? I am calling up to have voice mail turned off as soon as I get to the pier. It takes just minutes to do and is effective immediately. :)

[JerseyGem]

I would just use the cell phone. Your call from St Thomas will not cost you if you have CIngular Nation wide service (since St Thomas- the US Virgin Islands) is not international. That leaves just St Martin, and if Cingular has given you an OK price, just make sure you're away from the ship- since some ships do have cell service via satellite, which is much more expensive (please don't ask me the exact technology- way over my head). But I have seen complaints on this board about people who thought they were using a tower in the port, but when they received their bills, found out they'd actually connected to the much more expensive ship's satellite service.

 

Do you and your daughter text message? We found that to be a cheaper way of sending messages from the Caribbean (short ones, of course). You might want to ask CIngular the fee for texting to and from St. Martin.