At Sea in the Caribbean

One of the last bastions of "getting away from it all" fell recently as major cruise-ship lines introduced onboard cellphone service powered by a US$250,000 antenna system that's basically a floating cell site.

Passengers on many ships run by Carnival Cruise Lines, Norwegian Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises can now use their own phones, and, yes, their Black-Berrys while on the high seas.

The marvel, or some feel the curse, of at-sea phone calls is further evidence that "bits is bits"- whether they represent text, digitized voice, video, photos or other information.

If there's money to be made in transmitting them, somebody will step up to do it and competition will tend to drive prices down.

The "cellular at sea" service is offered by Wireless Maritime Services, a joint venture of U.S. cellphone giant Cingular Wireless and Maritime Telecommunications Network.

Cingular has roaming agreements with more than 300 carriers in 180 countries, including Canadian firms Rogers and Fido, so I am having no problem using my Rogers cellphone aboard the Norwegian Dawn cruise ship.

The bill hasn't arrived yet, but I'm assured the charges will be similar to those for international roaming, which means somewhere between US $2-$5/minute. (A lot better than the rapacious fees if you pick up that phone in your stateroom.) As one commentator put it, "the $10-a-minute satellite phone call is going the way of the midnight buffet."

About the only complexity in the cellular at sea system is that it switches itself off when the ship arrives at port, putting you at the mercy of local carriers such as Belize Telecommunications Ltd. (BTL). That outfit has a virtual monopoly in that country and was recently the subject of a nasty court and shareholder battle involving bizarre shenanigans.

I figured BTL is not necessarily someone I wanted to trust with billing information, so I stuck with the onboard cellphone service.

For sheer economy, the best communications bargain on a cruise right now is to use a BlackBerry or similar device. Data rates are relatively low and you can get a lot done in a short amount of time. Also, you won't be tempted to share your vacation adventures with friends and hear them gripe about the weather back home. That's how people run up those $200 cruiseship phone bills.

The Internet has also arrived on cruise ships, and with a vengeance.

Like most ships in the Norwegian fleet, the Dawn has a 24/7 Internet café, along with wireless access in public lounges, though not yet into the staterooms. For $3.95 a day, they will even download and print out your favourite newspaper and deliver it to your cabin.

Hmmm ... can you use Skype or some other VoIP system to drive down your phone charges even more? In principle, yes, since the cruise line says you can "run your own programs."

But, at 70 cents per minute (less if you purchase a "time plan"), I didn't feel like doing a lot of experimenting to get telephony running from my laptop.

As for shoreside Internet at Caribbean ports, I have found rates ranging from free (up to 15 minutes, at a gift shop that wanted to lure in customers) to almost as much per-minute as the ship charges. The worry at some of these backstreet cafes is that there might be a keystroke logger or some other techno-trap looking to grab your passwords. You might want to think before you do online banking or other important business from Pedro's Taqueria and Web Café.

Of course, on-board cellphones raise huge issues of social etiquette, since most people didn't go on a cruise to listen to other passengers yammering on the phones. All the ships are posting common-sense policies concerning restaurants and entertainment venues.

Some cruise lines, such as Disney, are resisting the cellphone trend, though it's seen as inevitable. Several articles in travel industry publications note that some people simply will not go on a cruise if they have to leave their tech-toys behind.

Where technology raises a problem, it often provides a possible solution, and the one that comes to mind here is enforced "quiet zones."

Technologies exist to jam cellphone signals in certain areas, and it can be made as specific as, "when you walk through this door your phone stops working."

There's been a reluctance to use cellphone blockers on land for legal reasons. What if somebody needs to call 911 for an emergency and their phone won't work? With one crew member for about every two passengers, there should be no such concern onboard an ocean liner. If you're going to go "Code Alpha" (cruise-ship lingo for emergencies such as a heart attack in the buffet line), there should be lots of people running to help you.

There's even a plan to fight back at cellphone pollution using the phone's own capabilities via Bluetooth.

A North Carolina-based company called BlueLinx announced its patent-pending Q-Zone technology to much fanfare in 2000. Q-Zone would communicate with a cellphone and force it into silent or vibrate mode in restricted locations such as hospitals and movie theatres.

Doctors and police would have ways to override it, and it was going to be sold as a subscription-based service.

Cell Block Technologies Inc., which is based in the U.S. but does its R&D in Ottawa, is barking up the same tree.

In case you haven't noticed, cell-blocking products have not exactly taken over the world, and phones are still ringing in lots of places where they shouldn't.

Like cruise ships. "Look, honey, there goes the Statue of Liberty, or the Na Pali Cliffs, or the Mendenhall Glacier, and by the way, your boss is on the phone and wants you to upload that overdue report."

Seems a shame, doesn't it?