Uniworld - WiFi Aboard the River Duchess

[skurvish]

For anyone planning a Uniworld cruise and using the onboard wifi there are a few things you should know. The following applies to the River Duchess as of the writing of this email. Things may change and other ships in the fleet may not operate the same so take that into consideration.

 

The wifi is free. When you board you collect a paper from the front desk that has a Login and Password. There is also a serial number but this is not used. For some reason the login is only valid for 1 week. At the end of the week just grab another login paper.

 

When you search for wifi networks you will choose the one labelled RiverDuchess_WIFI. Give it a few moments after it connects and a login page will be displayed where you enter your login and password. Once validated you are good to go.

 

Now the issues:

 

- network performance is slow as it is a satellite based system. It is also slower as more people go online. It does however seem to be much faster when the ship is docked.

- many applications are blocked. You cannot watch YouTube videos, you cannot use internet radio, Sirius online, Vonage mobile, etc. VNC Viewer will also not work. I did hear from someone that they got a Skype call through but I am skeptical on that one.

- as above cloud based applications do not seem to work either. At least 2 people I spoke to claimed they were unable to access their iCloud.

- it appears the DHCP lease time is very short. This means that some session based web applications will require you to log in repeatedly. Some of the apps I used completely lost the session and I had to start over and as a result I was unable to complete the operation. Other apps seemed to take me right back to where I was and I could keep going. YMMV.

- Paypal and likely other payment gateways detect where you are in the world when processing a transaction. The Uniworld system always detects Germany as that is where the satellite system is operating from. I had one transaction that Paypal would not process as a result of this. If you plan on using Paypal for transactions while cruising you may want to contact them beforehand to clear the way.

 

That's all, I hope that is helpful to future travelers.

[nickbevoz]

Sadly, that has been our experience also on two river cruises over the past few years and on two separate cruise lines.

 

It is simply a fact of life as they use the current system. I would love them to beef up their capacity but it is no simple thing.

 

One thing we did with our iPad last time was to get pre-paid data sims to use instead. Two comments though....

 

1. In Europe the phone system is very much country based. A prepaid data sim bought in, say, Austria will only work as "local" data in Austria. In Germany or France it will be used a a higher charge rate.

 

2. The method to buy a pre-paid data sim in each country is different. In Austria we simply walked into an Orange store and walked out with a fully functioning sim in our ipad. In Germany, they wanted our passport. In France, it was relatively easy but the data was expensive.

 

All of this is to say that, unlike in the USA or Australia (where we are from) you cant just buy a prepaid data sim that works everywhere. europe has open borders for everything but their phone system it seems.

 

Bottom line though, even though there is a real cost, we still got prepaid sims as it made web access (something we treasure) very much easier.

 

Also - as an aside - their is free web access a places like McDonalds and Starbucks but, again, the access arrangements are different in each country!

 

Sigh. I love Europe but I really wish they would inprove their phone system access.

 

Also - cruise lines - please improve your wifi systems.

[GraNanny]

This was my experience last year on the River Countess also. The satelite was taken down every time we entered a lock, and there were hundreds of them! I was not able to access AOL email, but yahoo worked.