Revisiting iConcierge on the Breakaway

[Maplemoose]

When searching the topic the only posts I have found were 2-3 years old.

 

I am wondering 2 things:

 

1) How reliable is the onboard calling and texting these days and

2) How much is the "nominal" fee. Gotta love that phrase! It started at $7.95 I know.

 

Thanks

[mking8288]

There's been newer updates & comments - none of which very encouraging or positive, so set your expectations accordingly ... maybe, you might be pleasantly surprised if you plan to sail her soon. :D

 

When we're sailing her on the Bermuda run, it was $9.95 per device, relatively cheap compared to reports from other ships - as much as $12.95 to $19.95 per device that same week.

See ours - (also, skip to post #150 and #151 for extra info) http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2358922&highlight=breakaway+bermuda

 

The paid texting feature is somewhat functional, like before, just not very reliable - see this review, post #1 (under "Bad")http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2389520&highlight=breakaway+bermuda

or, this - under "Ship Misc" in the post - http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=50790067&postcount=1

 

VoIP calling over WiFi is still pretty unreliable, if not outright not usable - our friends next door used it to call home and to her office, they could hear the party on land but they could NOT hear clearly ... very choppy & broken up, high latency didn't help on the satellite link.

 

According to NCL, they seemed to imply and/or indirectly gave the impression to the press that SpeedNet has been rolled out fleetwide and boosting speed/functionality by 4X with the new vendor ... and there's some visual sighting confirming the presence of newly branded satellite antenna domes on the top deck.

 

However, with many sailing Haven & Suites getting all the "Free At Sea" perks, I find it difficult to believe that nobody has come back and saying how great the "improved" internet has been as it should indirectly, if not directly, boost the App's function (ver. 3.0.20 on Android was last updated Nov. 10, 2015 - iOS version is similarly not very "current")

[BirdTravels]

We are just off the Jewel. They got their hardware upgrade about 4 months ago and had their cache server installed a couple of weeks ago. We do 5 or 6 cruises a year and always get an unlimited wifi plan. I was impressed with the performance of the wifi (compared to other ships).

 

I talked to the Internet manager and he said that the ship was well subscribed. Not sure exactly what that meant and he would not elaborate. I assumed that we were in US ports on 3 days, fewer people were up on wifi.

 

We were able to do FaceTime audio and some video every night. We tried a video download at sea and it worked fine (although a bunch of people doing that would drag down the network).

 

The Internet manager said that they arranged to hook up to land based Internet in all ports, so if you needed to download/upload, do it in port.

Edited August 28, 2016 by BirdTravels

[Shannon12]

On our cruise 7/31, it worked great for the first 3 days then never worked again at all.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app

[tantine]

On our recent Breakaway cruise, iConcierge was $9.95 per device. Texting worked great! Calls did not work at all - the call would go through but you could not hear anything on either end of the call. We were told that it was a microphone issue but that it was resolved at the end of the week. It was never resolved - we texted all week but couldn't make calls.

[mking8288]

On our recent Breakaway cruise, iConcierge was $9.95 per device ... Calls did not work at all ... We were told that it was a microphone issue but that it was resolved at the end of the week. It was never resolved - we texted all week but couldn't make calls.

Oh mine, LOL :rolleyes: :eek: thank you for that explanation, good thing I am holding my morning coffee firmly this morning - for real, a "microphone" phone issue on who's hardware, the calling party's smartphone or receiving party's phone on the other end of the call. Or, was it the microphone on the "marine operator's switching circuits *** " :D or satellite relays/ship's antenna towers ... maybe just a poorly written APP codes, not unusual when it hasn't been updated in over 9+ months.

 

Just for the record, for prices quoted on other NCL Ships, it was as high as $14.95 or $14.99 ($19.95 was my typo, couldn't edit or fix it 20 minutes after posting - forum rules) ... nobody else caught that, ha ha. *** (tone-in-cheek, just kidding)

Edited August 29, 2016 by mking8288