In June, the family are going on a cruise around the Mediterranean. The ship is the Royal Carribean “Independence of the Seas” which can hold nearly 6000 people. (3/4 of it are passengers).
We depart from Southampton on 19/6/2010 which means driving down from Belfast the day before.
Ports of Call:
Gibraltar (22/6/2010)
Villefranche, France (24/6/2010)
Florence, Italy (25/6/2010)
Rome, Italy (26/6/2010)
Sardinia, Italy (27/6/2010)
Cadiz, Spain (29/6/2010)
Lisbon, Portugal (30/6/2010)
Vigo, Spain (1/7/2010)
Arrive back in Southampton: 3/7/2010
So excited 😀
Of course, my concerns are going to be the ability to get adequate data connections while abroad. Last time we went on a cruise for the Honeymoon, I managed to send a lot of data (most of it at £4 a MB but some of it at £6 a MB) but this year I intend to be a little smarter about it. Maxroam is still around €3.40 a megabyte which is cheaper than O2 but still not the sort of price that I want to pay for mobile data.
In June 2008, T-Mobile decreased their data roaming costs to £1.50 a MB but as they’re merging with Orange, who knows what will happen.
The Register reported in February 2008 that:
Five operators across Europe have banded together and agreed to cut wholesale data rates to €.25 per megabyte. The agreement should reduce customer prices over the next 12 months
but I’ve yet to see a single reasonable decrease as a result.
So, I went and had a look;
| Carrier | Web Page | Costs |
| Three | EU Roaming | £1.25 per MB |
| Vodafone | Roaming | Around 20p a MB (£4.99 for the first 25MB per day) |
| O2 | International Roaming | £3 per MB |
| Orange | Phone Abroad | £2.55 per MB |
and at first look it would seem that Vodafone have it down. I’m going to have to go and talk to Vodafone now that my O2 contract is at an end.
Does anyone have anything to add here? Are you getting a great deal from your carrier for data roaming?