Using Mobile in the caribbean

marion_lockett

Hi help please.

I am going to the caribean on a cruise can anyone tell me what is the best thing to do re phoning home to the UK on a mobile.

Many thanks :rotfl:

redux

Some cruise ships have their own onboard GSM cell to allow you to use your phone. But this is expensive (maybe £3 or 4 a minute), as it's connected by satellite

As you're unlikely to be out of sight of land for long if at all, make a mental note of the name of the onboard one and then do manual network searches and avoid selecting it ...

To use other SIM cards, you'd need a phone that isn't locked to its network. And a tri- or quadband phone would be best, as some islands have the 1900 MHz frequencies as used in the USA.

There are several global roaming SIM cards with free incoming calls in several countries, and reasonable outgoing rates (from 29 or 39 eurocents a minute).

They come with Isle of Man, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Estonia and other numbers.

A problem is that in the Caribbean, because of the variety of roaming agreements involved, the countries with free incoming calls vary a lot between these brands, and where they aren't cheap they can be heading past £1 a minute or so.

An example is United Mobile, which actually supplies both Jersey and Liechtenstein numbered SIMs. If you click on their coverage map and zoom in then hover the cursor, you can see that for example a trip through the Windward and Leeward Islands would have you compiling a list in advance to take with you and then swapping these SIMs past almost each island to avoid €1.79 a minute.

So, depending whether you want continual good value coverage, or are happy to make and receive calls only at certain chosen times, it might even be worth wondering about getting 2 different global SIMs. But as I say, copy down a list of which to use from where

Other brands are Easyroam and Geosim (IoM Manx) which are similar, Sim4travel (Jersey), Travelsim Oneroam and Gosim (Estonia), Goglobalsim and Gymsim (IoM Wire9), Sunsim and Solomo (Germany)

The reason I've put the home country of the SIMs is that IoM and Jersey mobiles come from some UK networks inclusive minutes, at the moment O2 Orange and Virgin, which can be useful if you are forwarding your contract phone to your global SIM, or for people making calls to you. For people calling you from other networks or from landlines, brief them to use a cheap calls provider as found in the MSE Callchecker.

I'm sure this could look quite confusing, so if you want to ask more and can put some detail of your itinerary, I hope I can help by being a bit more specific.

storminbalder

Beware of pirates if it's an expensive phone!

lesley1960

We used our phones with no problem , they connected automatically , couldnt send picture texts with t mobile for some reason .

redux

lesley1960 wrote: »

We used our phones with no problem , they connected automatically , couldnt send picture texts with t mobile for some reason .

sure, it's possible, but T-mobile's roaming rates there are over £1 a minute, and likewise for other main networks