On 7 Mar, 19:15, Russell Hafter News
<see....@walkingingermany.invalid> wrote:

In the days of Cellnet my phone used to show "Manx Telecom" along some
of southern Galloway.

Ian

Nope, I said in my original posting that it was a full strength signal and
definitely not one of the French or British GSM operators, who were not at
all present in the ship. The signal was full strength even on the cars
decks - ie the signal was radiating from somewhere on the ship; in effect it
was an MVNO - i.e a  Mobile Virtual Network Operator, presumably taking a
satellite feed from the UK GSM network, just as Virgin or BT does, both
these piggy-back on one of the main land based GSM operators network. Its a
pity I did not make a note of the network name to see if it is registered as
a UK licenced Communications Service Provider, if not it would be an offence
for the ferry company to have it switched on in UK territorial waters.
Perhaps they switch it on once the ship is outside of the UK territorial
waters, which is about where the UK land based GSM signals drop out.

Alternatively it could be taking a GSM feed over the satellite system from
another country, e.g the country the ship is registered in, or where-ever in
which case, it might be very expensive to use. The Regulatory issue here is
that by September 2007 the EU mandated mobile call rates were in force so
the call rates should definitely not have exceeded the EU mandated maximum
(currently 35p send, 18p recive on O2)

I made a few enquiries but none of the crew I spoke to seemed to know
anything about it - perhaps it was being tested. There is certainly no
mention of it as an on-board facility on the Brittany Ferries web site.

Most of the ships have their own tower on board now. So, it's probabl
the ship's tower you were seeing. On my cruises to the caribbean o
Royal Caribbean my phone either showed "Cellular at Sea"  (AT&T phone)
or the network code such as "901-18"

Russell Hafter News;746628 Wrote:

--
mrcamp

Thanks Steve, that explains it! Calls made on a Channel Islands network are
not part of one's calling package even though the islands are part of the UK
Numbering Plan, so any call made or received on that ship would have been
added to my O2 bill.  I suspect the roaming charges may even be higher than
the EU permitted levels but how this can be justified when the ship is in
territorial waters of the UK or France would take some explaining!

The earlier post refrred to the problems of paying roming charges to Manx
Telecom while on the Mull of Galloway, I had just this experience 2 years
ago when a client called me and 30 minutes later, I had a knocked up big
roaming charge. mIf it hadnt been a client, I would have kept the phone call
VERY short!