T-Mobile on Caribbean Cruise?

[Amy11]

T-Mobile appears to have coverage on Castaway Cay and BVI. I just wanted to see if anyone has experience using the free texting and data? Should I turn the cell service off or keep it on?

 

[Chica1581]

I turned it on when we docked and it worked great for text and data. I was able to send some picks to family members.

 

[disneyfab]

It worked fine for us in Nassau & CC. The service was a little slower of course. We kept our phone in airplane mode until we docked. Once we took it off airplane mode, T-mobile sends a "Welcome to _____" text with the info of no roaming/text/data cost and voice is $.20 per minute.

 

[Amy11]

Does it charge you as voice when you check voicemails?

 

[SuperDry]

T-Mobile appears to have coverage on Castaway Cay and BVI. I just wanted to see if anyone has experience using the free texting and data?

Yes - I just got back from there. T-Mobile works fine.

Should I turn the cell service off or keep it on?

I keep mine on while on the ship so I can receive SMS (which is free). The problem is that voice on the ship costs $5.99/minute on T-Mobile, which is far more than the other carriers. Kind of strange since they have by far the best deal when on land internationally. But I receive almost no inbound voice calls, so it's not an issue. Another thing you can do is before leaving port, turn on call forwarding so all inbound calls go directly to voice mail (ask your carrier for the number to forward to for this function). This way, you'll never get an inbound call while on the ship's system, but can still text. Then, turn off forwarding when you get to the next port. Note that although forwarding settings are honored while on the ship, you cannot change them while at sea. And, you must use the unconditional forwarding feature, and not rely on the regular busy/no-answer feature, in order to be sure to avoid a minute of charges for unanswered incoming calls that go to voice mail. Whether you want to keep your phone on or off while at sea is dependent on whether you want to be able to receive texts while at sea.

Does it charge you as voice when you check voicemails?

It depends. If you have an iPhone, then voice mails are downloaded to your phone's memory in the background using the data. So, if you're in BVI or CC, you'll get your voice mail via the free data. There really isn't the notion of "checking for voice mails" other than looking at the icon on the phone. I would assume that Androids have a similar functionality, but I have no specific knowledge. Phones other than Android or iPhone likely do NOT have this feature, and would charge the $0.20/minute for voice mail retrieval.

 

[Amy11]

Yes - I just got back from there. T-Mobile works fine.

Thank you! Thanks all!