A Cellular Service Gone Terribly Wrong
If you’re new to cruising it’s important to understand that telephone calling from a ship is really expensive. Cell phone calls and the ships phones can cost $3 to $5+ a minute. Changes in options have been happening recently like internet calling and we’ll address that soon in an update. In this piece I’m looking at AT&T’s Cellular At Sea.
Recently we were taking a 30 day cruise that was going to visit the British Isles and cross the North Atlantic to Canada. It occurred to us that this would be a good opportunity to look into options for making cellular calls from onboard a cruise ship. We’ve been aware of the options from decades ago, back when the strongest recommendation was just don’t do it. so we decided it was time for an update experiment.
Cruise Ship Cellular Service
Today not much has changed from ten plus years ago. There is only one at-sea cellular company – Cellular At Sea owned by AT&T. For that reason we contacted AT&T and asked about our options. Their website explains the options for service as follows:
AT&T Cruise℠ Basic $60.00 – One-time charge for 30 days. Package Includes:
Talk: 100 min, overage $1.00/min Text: unlimited Data: 100MB, overage $10 for additional 100MB.
AT&T Cruise℠ Plus $100.00 – One-time charge for 30 days. Package Includes:
Talk: unlimited Text: unlimited Data: 1GB, overage $10 for 100MB
Costs And How It Works
Taken From AT&T’s Website Concerning Cellular at Sea
When at sea your AT&T Cruise package will activate 9 to 11 nautical miles from shore. Once you’re at sea your device will display Cellular at Sea, wmsatsea, 901-18, or NOR-18 when you’re connected*.
Since your AT&T Cruise package will only work at sea. You’ll want to add AT&T International Day Pass to stay connected throughout your adventures in port and on land.
What that requires is for you to have an AT&T cellular service account (prepaid service doesn’t work) and set the start date for your 30 days of AT&T Cruise℠ service. It is also recommended that you activate (free) AT&T International Day Pass for calling when you’re in port and on land. Once activated that service will cost $10 per 24 hours any time you place any call, text or use data internationally (maximum of $100 in charges per billing cycle).
The above suggests that any time your cruise ship is 11 nautical miles from shore, Cellular At Sea will be activated and stay active until you get within 9 nautical miles from shore again**. Sounds simple. We went to an AT&T store with one of our spare Motorola phones. My account was quoted at $48 per month plus taxes with no additional costs. Activating Cellular At Sea was going to cost another $100 and we could cancel our service at any time and receive a prorated refund on any service billing on the account.
What Happened
We sailed first out of Amsterdam and once out of sight of land nothing happened – no Cellular at Sea. The next morning Cellular at Sea was active and we tried making a couple of calls but none went through. Texting on another service (out T-Mobile plan) we contacted one of our sons and he said he had been trying to call but service never even seemed to ring. We contacted Guest Services on the ship (Royal Caribbean’s Jewel) and nobody seemed to know anything about Cellular at Sea, or who activated it, but they gave me a free call and provided a number they had for AT&T International. I called and that number was no longer in service. I tried using my AT&T phone to call the AT&T International Support number in my phone and got through. For three hours I worked with them with phone calls and text and they said they had fixed the problem. Still at sea the next morning we called our son. The call was clear with no lag and after about 45 seconds the call dropped. Couldn’t place another call. Later that day we were in Scotland – switched phones to T-Mobile and called home using data and VOIP***. Since we were going to be mostly in ports each day we left the AT&T turned off.
A week later we were back at sea for a three day stretch and with great difficulty managed to get a few Cellular at Sea calls through but many calls still dropped. The next day when texting we realized that we weren’t on Cellular at Sea any more. Instead we were on a cell service named FARO. With a little checking we found that we were about forty miles south of The Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic and our phone had switched to their service – that caused a $10 activation of International Day Pass for 1 text message.
Things never got any better and we gave up on the AT&T phone and just left it off. When we got home I spent four days trying to talk to AT&T and when I finally got a call back my service had passed a billing cycle and I was charged another months service. After telling my story they agreed to give me a credit of $65 for half of AT&T Cruise℠ Plus and half of the three $10 AT&T International Day Pass activations I didn’t even know about (one was a text message from AT&T, one a text message and one 2 minute phone call from Scotland?). Oh – and they don’t pro-rate for cancelled service and there was an activation fee of $35, additional taxes, misc company charges (?) all added up to $33.65 for a grand total on this experiment of $312.65**** but maybe we’ll get that $65 credit refunded but I’m not holding my breath.
Our Recommendation
First, never sign up for the AT&T Cruise℠ Plan and if you do, do not activate the International Day Pass. The AT&T Cruise℠ Plan service is very spotty and on a couple of days was never activated for most of the day. It is also impossible to predict when your service will flip to a land cellular service with the risk of activating high charges.
Oddly a service called Cingular kept popping up at sea and AT&T International didn’t know that service and suggested that we avoid it. IT’S ANOTHER NAME FOR AT&T!
** This is completely inaccurate. It turned out that our phone was constantly switching to land signals that were weaker and were well over 10 miles from the ship.
*** VOIP is when your phone uses data to call telephones. This used to require special equipment but now with Whatsapp and other services it is common. Most cell phones and some providers have this option built in.
**** This was originally calculated at the AT&T store to be about $175 total for what we wanted to do.
The Intentional Travelers 
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