You may need to call your provider for them to enable international roaming and service plans on certain smartphone models if you plan to use your wireless service during your vacation. Make sure you have an international planĪT&T Passport is among the international plans offering unlimited messaging and calling.ĭuring our travels to the Southern Caribbean recently, it was unclear from our provider’s website if San Juan, our departure port, was covered in our wireless plan, so we called to confirm that indeed our Internet and phone calls would be covered during our pre-cruise stay there, saving us some money. With that in mind, we've put together some tips when using your smartphone at sea - and a few things you should avoid doing at all costs.

No matter how much you like to unwind when on vacation, odds are that you'll be bringing your smartphone with you on your next cruise. How quickly times change! Now, almost everyone walks around with a smartphone, allowing us to not only talk to anyone but giving us access to texting, email, social media and the Internet.īest ways to use your smartphone on a cruiseįor most people, the days of going on an entirely “unconnected cruise” are pretty much over. And for most of us, that's a welcome development. Now we can go on vacation without being completely detached from our families, friends and the world. For more routine check-ins, cruisers would wait until their next port of call and whip out an international calling card (what?!) to use a pay phone on shore.

During an emergency, cruise ships offered onboard phones that you could use to make a call for several dollars a minute (by the way, they still exist).

Is skype free over wifi on smartphone