Internet: Getaway vs. Breakaway

We were on the Breakaway last year and had an good experience with internet package per minute; as the speed was excellent (by ship standards).

Based on what I've read, the internet on the Getaway is much slower than the breakaway. Can anyone confirm/deny? If internet is slower on Getaway, we may be need to purchase the unlimited package. Does anyone know if both ships have the same technology?

TIA :)

bump, anyone? :)

Last bump I promise! Anyone know if we should expect similar speeds on each ship, or is the Getaway's wifi significantly slower than the Breakaway?

Haven't been on Breakaway but the speed always relies on so many variables (passenger demography, itinerary, time of day, weather, etc) that nobody here can answer your question comparing the two ships reliably.

Haven't been on Breakaway but the speed always relies on so many variables (passenger demography, itinerary, time of day, weather, etc) that nobody here can answer your question comparing the two ships reliably.

Thank you for replying, I do appreciate it.

The reason I was asking is two-fold. First, reviews from the Breakaway mostly indicate happy wifi customers experiencing a reasonably fast internet connectivity (our experiences included) and reviews from the Getaway often state it is painfully slow to the point that uploading photos is challenging at best, impossible at times.

Second, the breakaway sells MB while the Getaway only sells unlimited or minute packages which leads me to believe that perhaps a different technology is being used on each ship? If the Getaway is significantly slower, that would explain why they aren't selling MB packages. This all seems seems odd because they are sister ships and the Getaway is newer, but the reviews overall lean toward much slower wifi availability on the Getaway.

Thanks again and happy cruising!

Breakaway is used for testing the new pricing model - all other ships in the fleet still use time based model. Because the test has already been going on for quite a long time, I'd guess that they can squeeze more money out of people with the old billing system - otherwise they would have rolled the capacity based billing on other ships too just like they did with room service charge etc, after much shorter testing period.

Also, Getaway is newer than Breakaway so I find it hard to believe that she'd have inferior technology installed.

 

Also, Getaway is newer than Breakaway so I find it hard to believe that she'd have inferior technology installed.

Me too, hence my confusion when reading the reviews. It looks like we are going to spring for the unlimited and I'll be able to report if any significant differences exist based on our experiences in a few weeks.

Reporting back since no one seemed to have first hand experience. I'm sad to say that the internet on the Getaway was TERRIBLE while the internet on the Breakaway last year was TERRIFIC. I'm not sure why there is a difference, but a difference absolutely exists.

We got off the Getaway 2 weeks ago. We had a work emergency and had to get online. We got the 250 minute package for $125 plus $3.95 connection fee. It was horrible. We weren't even able to get into anything like gotomypc or logmein and ended up texting and making phone calls. We had to use Yahoo mail and downloading attachments, etc. was excruciatingly painful. Everything kept timing out. What made it worse for us was that we have Verizon and unlike in San Juan, we couldn't even connect in St. Thomas. Driver told us AT&T and Sprint were better there. I don't know if it was due to the work issues anxiety or that the internet really just sucked. Based on past experiences on other ships/lines, I'm leaning towards it sucked. :)

It sucked. For sure.

Ship's internet is satellite-based and relayed, the signals bounced thousands of miles up & down to land towers for relay.

Getaway is a year newer in age vs. Breakaway and should have newer hardware installed, if not same.

It is possible that ship's locations might be a factor in latency and speed - or, their IT decided to get the ISP to "throttle" back the connection and imposed bandwidth control, thus making it slower & a pain to connect.

One of our nieces & family were on the GA recently along with their friends, and had no trouble connecting FaceTime and made video calls, so the connection was useful.

Relaxing in a hotel on land with free WiFi internet, the signal is horrible and speed is barely DSL, usable but would timed-out if I try to download a bigger file ... so much so for not getting work done on a road trip. 4G LTE hotspot to be rescue, gotta thank T-Mobile. On a cruise ship, your choices are limited or none, but no dry land - I've gotten some pretty fast connection on business class ISP.

We were on RCI Oasis last month and purchased the unlimited package. The speed was so good that I was able to broadcast LIVE all week long via Periscope. It was an incredible experience to share with other cruise fans in real time from all over the world.

I was hoping to do the same on GA this November . . .but . . .it's starting to sound like it's not going to happen . . .:confused:

We got off the Getaway 2 weeks ago. We had a work emergency and had to get online. We got the 250 minute package for $125 plus $3.95 connection fee. It was horrible. We weren't even able to get into anything like gotomypc or logmein and ended up texting and making phone calls. We had to use Yahoo mail and downloading attachments, etc. was excruciatingly painful. Everything kept timing out. What made it worse for us was that we have Verizon and unlike in San Juan, we couldn't even connect in St. Thomas. Driver told us AT&T and Sprint were better there. I don't know if it was due to the work issues anxiety or that the internet really just sucked. Based on past experiences on other ships/lines, I'm leaning towards it sucked. :)

Not to get too far off topic, but we connected just fine with Verizon at St Thomas on more than one trip. Data and texting is free, but phone calls are $1.99/minute. That's the info on Verizon's web, and that's how it worked in reality. No problem with signal strength either.

We were on RCI Oasis last month and purchased the unlimited package. The speed was so good that I was able to broadcast LIVE all week long via Periscope. It was an incredible experience to share with other cruise fans in real time from all over the world.

 

I was hoping to do the same on GA this November . . .but . . .it's starting to sound like it's not going to happen . . .:confused:

Unfortunately, the newer RCI ships are in a completely different class when it comes to internet speeds. You won't be able to do the same on Getaway.

RCI contracted a telecommunications company, O3b, to provide Internet service. O3b (Other 3 billion) is dedicated to getting broadband speed internet to people in third world and developing countries, and RCI is taking advantage of the tech created to support that initiative. Coverage is still extremely limited, but when you're sailing in area with O3b coverage, the internet speeds are blazingly fast.

NCL uses MTN, but most cruise lines rely on a mix of providers. RCI uses Harris for most of their fleet, but O3B on their newest ships. O3B is the best with low-orbit satellites. I used O3B on Quantum, and it was nearly as fast as broadband at home. I was able to stream video onboard Quantum in the Caribbean, which really blew my mind!

MTN and Harris are rolling out new hybrid systems that use land-based wi-fi antennas when ships are close to shore. Both low-orbit and hybrid systems have coverage issues at the moment, but they are constantly improving. As far as I know, both Breakaway and Getaway have the same systems from MTN. I personally didn't notice much of a difference in speed.