Cellular Phones on Panama Canal Cruise
Ann McWhirter
Does anyone know if one can use an American cellular phone in the San
Juan-Panama Canal-Costa Rica-Mexico area to make calls to the United
States?
Ann McWhirter <-----whose husband hopes that using his cellular phone
would be cheaper than paying $15.50/minute to make calls from the ship.
This is the guy who pays big bucks for a cruise but is too cheap to pay
$15.50 to find out if his parents are still alive :-)
MIPI
Ann, I can see no reason why not. I carried mine aboard the Norway and made a
number of calls off the rear deck when I was in the U.S. Virgin Island. one
heck of alot cheaper than the Ship to Shore phones in the cabins. Some lines
have lowered the phone rates.
I would think you can use your cellphone anywhere you can get a signal. I use
AirTouch in Detroit... and have the $3.95 a month service whereby I get phone
calls no matter where I am in the country and can make same without fooling
around with roaming.
Bob
Dennis M. Marks
The Panama Canal is not in the United States. If you are able to use the
phone at all you will get a roaming service that will place the call
with a credit card at a very high rate.
I live in Northern California and made a call from Fort Lauderdale once.
My phone was set wrong and I did not get the contracted roaming which
would have been $.99/minute. A one minute call ended up costing me $8.
--
Dennis M. Marks
mailto:denm...@dcsi.net
http://www.dcs-chico.com/~denmarks/
Michael C. Gow
There were a number of ports on our recent South American cruise where
local entrepreneurs set up portable phone booth clusters on the dock with
cellular phones on their local networks. You could call anywhere in North
America for around $1.00 US a minute which is a pretty good deal. They
were popular with the passengers and particularly the crew. I haven't seen
that in Central America or the Caribbean but there would have to be some
interest in doing that there.
Some of the cruise lines seem to have better rates than others. Crystal
was about $13 a minute from the ship in South America, but NCL was $3.95 a
minute on my canal cruise last year.
Mike
mike cordelli
Anne,
Check with your cellular carrier to see if they have to do anything to let
the calls go through. Many are blocking calls not from the 48 states as
part of their anti fraud activities.
Also check out Voicenet, they offer extremely inexpensive calls from pay
telephones all over the world. Don't know about the areas you mentioned,
but from England to the states was only 28 cents per minute, no surcharge.
They are at 800-377-1490 (and here on the internet someplace), their card is
the travelers best friend.
Robert C. White Jr.
Dennis M. Marks (denm...@dcsi.net) wrote:
: The Panama Canal is not in the United States. If you are able to use the
: phone at all you will get a roaming service that will place the call
: with a credit card at a very high rate.
The Panama Canal Zone definitely is the United States until 11:59
on Dec 31, 1999.
[ Robert C. White, Jr. r...@whitestar.com ]
[ Rescue a Malamute today. WhiteStar Corporation ]
[ http://www.whitestar.com Cartographic Data ]
Chuck.K
Ann,
We recently transited the Canal on Princess. I have a
analog cellphone with BOTH carriers active, and while I was
able to connect to various operators, I was NEVER able to
actually get a call through. (Although if I spoke Spanish I
might have been able to).
My backup was my VoiceNet calling card, with an additional
backup of a Sam's Club prepaid calling card. Both of the
backups worked fine from locations in Mexico, Columbia, and
Aruba.
The cost for calling the States was around 4 times the cards
US only fee, or about $.40-45 per minute.
Chuck.....