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back to article EU approves on-board GSM for cruisers

The EU has approved the use of on-boat GSM base stations, but users will have to remain below decks once they're within a couple of miles of the shore. The agreement covers all ships in European waters. Those on board will be able to run GSM services at 900 and 1800MHz as long as they stay below decks once they vessel is …

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  1. rpjs

    GSM range can be impressive

    Last year we took a med cruise and I was surprised to find that out on the sea between Barcelona and Villefranche (near Nice) I could pick up an Algerian network when I ran a network detect. I also got Tunisian networks while sailing around Sicily on the way to Santorini..

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    1. Mayhem
      Reply Icon

      Nautical towers are more powerful than land too

      Back in NZ, it was common to make cell calls from the fishing fleet out to about 50NM offshore because the marine transmitters had directional cells instead of round ones - they threw the signal a lot further out to sea than on land. I believe the max range was around 150NM but that was on the old telecom analogue network. GSM was significantly less. Probably something to do with horizons too.

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  2. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    FAIL

    So how do we..

    make a claim against the ship (which we may not even be aware of) that has 'stolen' our network connection and slapped on a hefty bit of extortion?

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  3. frank ly

    Stay Below Decks - Why?

    Why do users have to stay below decks when within 12nm of the shore? Is it something to do with making sure their mobile phone doesn't log into a land based network?

    Will ferry and cruiser security staff be patrolling the decks when the vessel gets within 12nm to make sure no sneaky, cheapskate passengers/crew are making 'cheap' calls by using any accessible land based networks as they approach the shore?

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    1. Magnus_Pym
      Reply Icon

      They'll just switch off

      Surely it won't be difficult to control radio access areas within a steel box subdivided into smaller steel boxes. Who knows you could probably track you kids (husband/wife) round the ship by which pico cell they are on.

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  4. Jon Press

    Auto network selection...

    ... seems to need some tweaking for cases like this. I'd like to be able to set my phone to roam automatically to any network that's covered by the EU charge cap but not automatically connect to private networks. In fact, I'm not even sure a private network that's not covered by the charge cap should be allowed to automatically register handsets without some indication of what the charges are likely to be.

    On a ferry across the north sea a year or two ago I didn't realise that there even was an onboard network until I received an incoming call and I saw an unusual network name displayed - there were no obvious notices on board about it or the roaming charges.

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  5. Mike Shepherd
    Unhappy

    I'M ON THE CRUISE

    Delightful...even at the Captain's Table, you won't escape the morons for whom their ringing phone has priority over all else.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    all your handsets are belong to us?

    So,

    1) fit out a powerboat with openbts + uplink + several 'eye catching models' etc

    2) Buzz past any cruise ships and wait for punters to snap pics, tweet etc

    3) profit as they end up using *your* uplink to post the pics

    Win :-)

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Pornography on the high seas?

    Beautifully worded, Bill, always nice to start the week with a laugh

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  8. Ralph B
    Pirate

    Here's a business model ...

    1. Buy yourself a motor boat and a pico-cell

    2. Spend your days cruising up and down the Thames in London

    3. Profit!

    Hmm. The Somali pirates could probably adopt this model too. They could leave their guns at home, and just potter alongside the cruise liners and tankers, leaching GSM connections, instead of attacking them.

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  9. Anton Ivanov
    Boffin

    Range for detection != usable range

    You can "see them" but you cannot use them.

    The maximum distance from cell tower in GSM is fixed and limited by the range of the timing advance parameter. I cannot remember the actual values off the top of my head, but they were somewhere in the range of low tens of km for 900 and AFAIK even lower than that for 1800. So while you can see networks from afar at see or in the mountains, your cellphone cannot attach to them and make calls.

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  10. Nigel Jones
    FAIL

    Not good news

    Bad news I think for end users -- I've been on a number of cruises -- each time the ships had an onboard GSM cell, but rates are huge.

    As such the hour or so when close to shore makes for an ideal time to make calls/send textx etc at slightly more reasonable roaming rates easily. Now with the local signal being so strong users will have to be very very careful not to get hit by a big bill.

    Not a step forward IMO

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  11. Nigel Jones
    FAIL

    should be opt-in

    I think there needs to be an opt-in for this -- network rejects association unless previously registered. Perhaps a way to make that simple, but "catching" unaware consumers is absolutely not on.

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    1. Mike Shepherd
      Reply Icon

      Opt-in

      I have experience only of Nokia phones, but they've all had an option for manual network selection.

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  12. James Micallef Silver badge

    It's high time....

    That operators start working with 1 fixed rate EU-wide.

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