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VOOM! Internet - is it worth the cost?

SRV FAN

By SRV FAN,
in Royal Caribbean International

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Clarea

Clarea

Posted
Posted

I thought the response time significantly was better today, and speedtest shows a dramatic improvement:

 

Brilliance, mid-Atlantic, half-way between Gibraltar and San Juan:

 

Download: 3.88 Mbps

Upload: 0.38 Mbps

Ping: 571 ms

 

This is Surf & Stream.

 

Could be we switched to a different satellite with more download bandwidth.

 

Still cannot get Periscope to work, keeps saying "Poor Connection". Upload speed is probably insufficient.

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Biker19

Biker19

Posted
Posted

Brilliance, mid-Atlantic, half-way between Gibraltar and San Juan:

 

Download: 3.88 Mbps

Upload: 0.38 Mbps

Ping: 571 ms

 

Could be we switched to a different satellite with more download bandwidth.

or as I mentioned in another post, all those D and D+ already used up their free days and are no longer online.:p

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UandMe4Ever

UandMe4Ever

Posted
Posted

We just ordered the voyager package for 1 comp. Not bad...$8.99 per day.(which was with the 30% discount for booking before boarding). We did this because after calling Verizon, found out that with our "old cell phone", we would get NO service at all, and not even at any of the Ports. :-( Do not like feeling that much out of touch.

 

On Princess we always get hundreds of free internet minutes so we never took our own computer as it was just as easy to go to the Internet Café and same with NCL...

 

No problem. Wasn't that expensive for a nice convenience.

 

Safe travels all. :-)

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Moonarino

Moonarino

Posted
Posted
(wilmingtech)

There are lots of things that can cause good or bad internet.

(manual "quote" as the post refused to load so I could quote it directly.)

 

Yep, and maybe others on our current Oasis cruise are in a better location/whatever, but I'm not even getting 1mb download speeds, even when docked with a lot of passengers onshore. (This is thru host "fdcservers.net" in Miami, which apparently returned a "best ping" at 185ms.)

 

... As long as I'm not trying to stream video, correct?

 

Just fyi, in case anybody thinks of youtube as video streaming: I've got the VOOM surf ($62-at-discount pkg) and we've noticed maybe one glitch near the start of a music video, and then smooth performance after it buffers a bit. But that's at low-Q, nothing above 240p so far (set on "auto", youtube picks the bitrate).

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

re clarea...

 

Now on the Brilliance TA, docked in Gibraltar:

 

Download: 0.41 Mbps

Upload: 0.31 Mbps

Ping: 635 ms

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Kinda slow Bob.

 

I'm wondering if the same experience will be found on the Oasis class ships that have not only the newest equipment but are also designed to support more people aboard those ships.

 

I have VOOM w/STREAM reserved on Harmony next year.

 

.....

 

Totally different setup and should have much better experience with WiFi.

 

Not necessarily, i.e., don't set expectations too high. I'm on Oasis now and as I wrote above, so far I haven't gotten better than about 0.5-1mb download, even during low-use periods.

 

One thing I will say is I'm not getting those infuriating 2-to-5-minute page-loading delays like I used to. Maybe lower-than-advertised bandwidth, but even then it's far more reliable in general.

 

I meant lengthier higher res videos - it maybe slow but it should work on Surf only.

 

Agree, streaming does work pretty well at low-res.

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RCCLFan0001

RCCLFan0001

Posted
Posted

Hey guys - since some of you seem to be on a cruise now, did RCCL just change the pricing on their internet? I'm not seeing packages for more than 2 devices at a time any more for either the Surf or S&S package, and we're looking at getting the 5 device package for the family as it's far more cost effective (we're actually getting 2 of them).

 

Thanks for the help!

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Biker19

Biker19

Posted
Posted
Hey guys - since some of you seem to be on a cruise now, did RCCL just change the pricing on their internet? I'm not seeing packages for more than 2 devices at a time any more for either the Surf or S&S package, and we're looking at getting the 5 device package for the family as it's far more cost effective (we're actually getting 2 of them).

 

There were a few threads about this last week. It seems RCI did away with any package with more than 2 devices.

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Biker19

Biker19

Posted
Posted

One thing I will say is I'm not getting those infuriating 2-to-5-minute page-loading delays like I used to. Maybe lower-than-advertised bandwidth, but even then it's far more reliable in general.

 

That's the much better experience I was talking about.

 

BTW, the low BW numbers could be a sign that RCI is evening out the BW caps on Surf. On non-O3B ships it has been quite consistent at .5Mbs but has been as high as 5Mbs on O3B ships. It seems that the latter category ships are being cut back to the same .5Mbs

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wyldkarma

wyldkarma

Posted
Posted

We are currently on Liberty of the seas out of Galveston. We purchased the 7 day surf and stream package. We have NOT been able to stream a single program. VOOM is not fast enough for actual steaming like on Netflix. Email or browsing the web is fine but not streaming. We complained and they refunded our fee. It works okay when in port when most people are off the ship, but when everyone is on at the same time the bandwidth cannot handle it. Not sure if this is fleet wide or just the Liberty. Just ran a speed test. 9 pm, couple hours away from Cozumel out at sea. Ping: 1868 ms. Download: .31 mbps. Upload: 2.27 mbps. Good luck streaming much of anything. Why they advertise VOOM as being able to stream movies is beyond me. Flyers all over the ship says this is VOOM.

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Computer Nerd

Computer Nerd

Posted
Posted
Here are the differences in the plans....

 

 

http://www.cruisecritic.com/news/news.cfm?ID=6974&UTM_Source=Social&UTM_Medium=Facebook&UTM_Campaign=News&UTM_Content=Royal

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app

 

So to use a VoIP app such as "Whatsapp" one would need to purchase the VOOM + Stream package?

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  • 8 months later...
WVCruzer1980

WVCruzer1980

Posted
Posted

I am on RC's website and wanting to purchase the two device VOOM. I put it in my cart and was asked about which guest so I selected me and my wife. But, then it tries to charge me $22/day/guest. When purchasing things like this do I just select under my name and then anyone in my family can use it? Thanks

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Clarea

Clarea

Posted
Posted
I am on RC's website and wanting to purchase the two device VOOM. I put it in my cart and was asked about which guest so I selected me and my wife. But, then it tries to charge me $22/day/guest. When purchasing things like this do I just select under my name and then anyone in my family can use it? Thanks

Yes, purchase one two-device package for yourself and anyone who has the access code can use it.

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Biker19

Biker19

Posted
Posted
We are stuck with 1.5 mbps so we are quite familiar with sluggish.

You could do just about anything with that kind of speed including viewing an HD stream - the problem is latency, which ships without O3B have it in spades.

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packercruising

packercruising

Posted
Posted
You could do just about anything with that kind of speed including viewing an HD stream - the problem is latency, which ships without O3B have it in spades.

 

All I can say is, we were happy with the connection and it is the first time we have not had to log out each time.

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  • 5 months later...
vranzvanmaaren

vranzvanmaaren

Posted
Posted

2016-11 and 2017-11 onboard Jewel: Voom internet is A SCAM! Shame on you, @Royal Caribbean.

Speedtest results some 0.2 Mbit down (Surf&Stream).

2017-12 onboard Navigator some 0.14 Mbit down (Surf-only).

Ping around 2000...! Where'd you see that? Heavily overpriced. Stay away from Voom.

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