RING? RING? IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ATLANTIC???

I had always assumed that once we were out past land and certainly in the Atlantic that our mobile phone will not work. I know the ships have GPS and all that jazz from satellites, and there may be phones from the ship that work through satellite (as they had that on the "Aurora"). But recently there was a scurry of activity on a number of the boards and the groups on the topic. It did all start to get a bit technical at one point.

But the concensus seemed to be: you are ona crossing, in the middle of the atlantic.... why not just "switch off" in all senses of the word (although I am sure 6 days with no email checking will be hard for me... plus it will mean there will be at least 600 spam emails waiting..)

Here is some of the discussion on the topic of mobile phones on the QE2/ QM2 crossings:

RACINGLAWYER: "Question. Does anyone have any experience with the sucessful use of an International Cell phone during an Atlantic crossing?"

COLINCAMERON: " Take it you do mean an International Cell phone and not a satelite phone? In that case I'm afraid you're out of luck. You'll pretty much loose the signal when you loose sight of land... Part of the attraction of being in the middle of the Atlantic is being out of touch with land people".

TRANSATLANTIC TOM: "Yes, I couldn't agree more with Colin....one of the many wonderful things about a transatlantic crossing is being out at sea away from "the real world"....as far as I'm concerned being aboard a Cunard liner out in the middle of the Atlantic -at that moment in time- IS the center of the world/universe !!!"

CRUISR: "As you are going from Southampton to NYC, if you have an Intl. phone, you will get service all the way out the channel, past the Isle of Wight and depending on how good your signal as you are sailing along the coast of England. You will then lose it. I had my US cell phone with me and I received a signal (when I was on my balcony) at about 7:00PM the night before we docked (I guess we were off the MASS/RI/NY coast)".