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Radiance, Cellular at Sea


DonR

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Is there any one who has been on Radiance lately that can tell me how the Cell coverage is on board?

We like to have communications while on board mainly for our 10-YO who likes to check into Adventure ocean on his own and such but wants the life line of being able to text us (he has some ADHD anxiety moments) In the past we have had and used Voom effectively however recently we found out that my Cell plan has international _including_ Cellular at sea. 

We were just on Grandeur last month and the cell coverage on board was some what less than ... well, spotty would have been an improvement. We got the welcome text saying we had 2G data which was cool if we could get signal anywhere.  I understand from talking to other cruisers on the June 6th 4 day with us that the VOOM system wasn't much better so it may have been a maintenance issue on board. 

As we are on Radiance for a 9 night next March 9th I am trying to research in advance!

 

Thanks!

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Cellular at Sea also uses satellites to connect to the world.  Often Voom is slow with cloud cover and raining conditions or at certain positions and ship headings.  When Voom sucks it's possible so will Cellular at Sea.   

Cellular at Sea uses an onboard cell tower to generate a cell signal.  That signal can't penetrate all the steel everywhere on the ship so at times and in places around the ship Cellular at Sea may have low signal strength and in places around the ship it can be worse than the Voom wifi.   

Also Cellular at Sea will automatically turn off near land so it can't possibly interfere with any land based cell towers.  Approaching a port Cellular at Sea goes away and doesn't come back until the ship has left the port and is well away from land.  If that is when you need to reach your child Cellular at Sea won't be available.

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We were on Radiance last month...Cruising from Vancouver to Alaska and the ships Wi-Fi was not very good sometimes due to the clouds and mountains.  Didn't try Cellular at Sea due to the cost. However, during a lot of the inside passage we did pick up land based cell towers and we would use them when the ships Wi-Fi was down or spotty.  

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