Written at 330pm, Sunday, 2 September on Crown Princess, preparing to depart Crown Bay
When doing my pre-cruise research, I encountered some seemingly conflicting information on the cellular situation. Aside from the admonition that one of the nice things about taking a cruise has been being mostly unplugged, I thought I’d share the following bits of information for other future cruisers:
I use Sprint for both my cell phone and wireless broadband (EVDO) service.
From our starboard-side cabin, we had strong signals, both phone and EVDO Rev A, at port in Brooklyn and in San Juan.
My wife was able to make phone calls for a surprising length of time after we left San Juan.
In St. Martin / Sint Maarten, my wife remembered that she had forgotten to turn off her cell phone, and reported getting a strong digital (CDMA) roaming signal. We didn’t try it out, and I have no idea of what the roaming charges would be.
In St. Thomas, at Crown Bay, I had one bar of digital roaming signal, and one bar of non-EVDO roaming service in my starboard side cabin, and one bar non-roaming / EVDO Rev A signal on the balcony. However, on the port side of the ship and on the dock, I was getting a full five bars of Sprint signal.
We’ve been told to expect no CDMA signal at Grand Turk; it’s apparently GSM-only there.