Mobile phone data use when on a ship or ferry
Which apps use the most data when roaming and how can you find out?
While on the ferry returning from Santander to the UK I was surprised how many people were receiving messages and phone calls on their mobile phones. I wondered if they knew how much those calls were costing and whether they cared. I began to doubt whether I really needed to have put my phone onto aircraft mode so when I got back I checked call and data charges.
I was right to put my phone on aircraft mode, I was shocked to discover how much my mobile provider charges when on a ferry, here’s a snapshot of the prices charged by ID Mobile (October 2025) for Sea Roaming.
Calls to UK | £6.00 per minute |
Calls to ships, ferries etc | £6.00 per minute |
Calls received | £1.50 per minute |
Texts to ships, ferries etc | £1.20 |
Texts to UK | £1.20 |
Picture message (MMS) | £0.60 |
Internet and data | £9.60 per MB |
These charges are not set by ID Mobile, but by the company that operates the satellite service used by the ship or ferry company.
I was shocked when I saw these prices, most of us don’t think about data use, but we should, web pages have become larger as time progresses, in 2022 the average size of a page was about 2MB, which means a cost of around £20 to view it when using mobile phone data on a ferry.
I’ve collected real use statistics that are available in a web page, it makes interesting reading.