Germany, France, and another Rhine River Country, with T Mobile Family Plan and VPN Question

[Microman]

I already know that I can use text and data in these countries with my 7 member family plan.

And phone calls could be xx cents a minute, which I will try to avoid.

What should I do, AIRPLANE mode, or ? Wifi will be available on this river cruise.

And Have PIA VPN at home on my MacBook, can I or should I try and use the VPN on the iPhone as well?

[OWC Jamie]

You don't have to do airplane mode on the ship.
For ship's wifi data you have to set up an account and buy minutes. When the minutes are used up the account just won't work.

For voice calls over the ship's satellite system you have to accept the charges on the call.

On a river cruise you will likely be within 12 miles of land at all times and their voice call satellite system will be off or publicly unaccessible by law. They are not allowed to compete with local cell services.

[Michael]

We went on a Viking cruise on the Rhine last year and the wifi just worked through the whole cruise. It didn't require any login. They also had a couple of computers that were available for free. We used Google Hangouts for calls so it didn't cost any minutes. The wifi was better in some places than others, of course.

[Microman]

Google hangouts, similar to Viber?

[Winston]

Microman wrote:
Google hangouts, similar to Viber?

Yes and no. You need to install both Google Hangouts AND Google Voice and set them up. Then you can make free calls to U.S. and Canadian numbers using Google Hangouts or Google Voice. (Don't know why both are required.) You can also use it to make paid calls to other countries. You'd have to check rates.

Our T-Mobile plan has $0.20/min for voice calls when abroad, in most countries. This applies for both making and receiving calls. We leave our phones in regular mode - Airplane mode kills the free data access you get from overseas roaming with T-Mobile. If someone calls, we either ignore it, or answer and then call them back via another method (FaceTime, Google Voice, Viber, etc.)

The $0.20/min also applies to making calls to numbers in the country we are visiting. For simplicity, we sometimes use this for things like making a dinner reservation.

I'm sure all the places you will visit will be within the T-Mobile international roaming plan. The only place we've been which was not covered was the Maldives.


If you want to put the phone in WiFi-only mode when on the boat, you should still get calls on T-Mobile WiFi calling (assuming your phones support that). And, unlike AT&T, T-Mobile does not charge the $0.20/min for WiFi based calls. They are included in your plan regardless of where you are in the world.

But be careful: if you make a call to a number in Germany, say, while on WiFi calling, T-Mobile might treat it as if you called Germany from the U.S. ($3/min?) instead of giving you the $0.20/min international roaming rate for calls. I'd check on this with T-Mobile before you go. But T-Mobile WiFi calls to and from the U.S. are just the same as if you called them from home. You can disable WiFi calling if you need to (just turn off WiFi), but you need to remember to do so.


Good luck.

- Winston

[Winston]

ps: We've found that because of T-Mobile WiFi calling we almost never use Google Hangouts or Viber for calls when abroad. If you can do T-Mobile WiFi calling it's simpler to just do that. We do use FaceTime, but that's in part to get video calls with family who have iPhones.

Google Hangouts would help at times when you don't have WiFi access, but do have a good (free) cellular signal you can use for internet-based calls back to the U.S. These would hit the free roaming data, and don't count as $0.20/min cellular phone calls.