In the past few years maritime GSM services have become available on boards of all the major ships and ferries all over the world. One of the biggest providers of those type of services is Norwegian Telenor - acting as MCP (Maritime Communications Partner) on this market. The usual solution provided by MCP is to built a distributed antenna system on a ship, attach a BTS and connect it using VSAT service with the world. Their GSM 1800MHz network (mostly on European waters) is switched on as soon as teritorrial waters are left behind. Passengers may roam on this network, use voice and data seriveces, paying quite high rates (for Polish operator Plus the roaming rate for 1 minute call is approximately 1,6Eur).
Moreover, MCP is providing their own pre-paid service: 'Crew calling card", which according to various information found on the internet can be purhased on board of a ship. They also have several roaming agreements with 'standard terrestrial networks.
Some details may be found here:
MCP - Maritime Communications Partner
I was wondering if anyone has any experience in that field? Is it possible to buy such a card by a non-crew member? What are the connection rates? Do they assign Norwegian phone number?
Looking forward to hearing from all the experienced travellers and sailors
