Staying in touch with home while on a cruise

by Tim Larison

Carnival Cruise line recently announced it will outfit its fleet of 22 ships to enable guests with any cell phone service to make and receive calls at sea or send and receive text messages on their phones and hand-held devices. Carnival says their entire fleet will be outfitted with this technology by the 1st quarter 2007. Calls will be charged at international roaming rates, and will be billed directly to the passenger’s cell phone bill.

This sounds like a nice addition, but international roaming rates can still be expensive. If you have a job like mine where you need to stay in touch with clients and/or family back home while on a cruise, here are some tips:

Use a web based Email service – Before leaving home I forward my email to a web based email service (I use a free yahoo mail account) then check my email daily on the cruise. I always buy a block of minutes if available (or unlimited time on the Disney cruise). If I don’t have unlimited internet time on the cruise I like to visit internet cafes in the ports when I’m not on a shore excursion to save on minutes. Internet cafes worked especially well for me in Alaska where internet cafes near most docks were readily available, and the internet connections in these cafes were faster and more reliable than on the cruise ship.

Use the internet to keep track of voicemail – visit www.evoice.com for a free voice mail phone #. When someone leaves you a message at that number, evoice sends you an email message with the voice mail included. Before leaving home I forward my phone numbers to my evoice number, so if someone leaves me a voice message while I’m away I’ll get an email with the message on the ship. This does require a laptop (evoice requires you to install a special player to hear the messages), but most cruise ships these days do have wireless access where you can check your email from your own laptop (that’s me in the picture above checking my email in our stateroom on our May 06 Carnival Cruise). Some internet phone services, like www.sunrocket.com, also have a phone number with voice mail you can check from the web. If I get a message that requires a phone call, I can call from the next port (or use my stateroom phone if urgent attention is required)

Buy a Mobal phone – www.mobal.com has a $49 phone you can buy that works in over 140 countries with no monthly fee. A phone that works in over 160 countries can be bought for only $99. You buy the phone once, and only pay for the minutes you use. If you travel internationally frequently like I do, but don’t need to call home unless something urgent comes up, this is a great plan. I used my mobal phone to call home from Venice on our May 2006 Europe cruise and it worked great!

Those of you who can totally get away on a cruise without the need to check email or phone messages are fortunate. But if you are like me and still need to stay in touch with back home I have found the above tips allow me to monitor my business and family contacts without taking away too much from the enjoyment of the cruise.