Streaming WiFi package

[TrpngBilly]

Anyone have any feedback on the wifi packages as far as reliability on the Epic recently?  We have done the iConcierge APP on past cruises and found it to be marginally reliable at best but I'm wondering if there have been improvements in the last year or so?  Thanks in advance and sorry if it's been addressed already, I couldn't find the thread if there is one.

[noobcruiser]

I was on the Epic this past September in the Mediterranean and the ship's wifi was awful regardless of time of day.

[kenlyn]

This doesn't pertain to the Epic specifically but I'm fresh off the Escape and it was terrible.  There was no internet at all for 24 hours the first sea day and after that I was never able to "stream" anything. I got about 5 minutes of a game we wanted to watch and it would just freeze. Waste of upgrade money for sure. They did credit me 12 bucks for the day with no internet after I went to cafe and asked for it.

[cksv]

Epic NYE - Internet was unusable the entire cruise. Couldn’t get websites to load, regardless of the time of day/night. The NCL app worked great though for reviewing cabin charges and seeing what was going on around the ship.

[VideoTech]

The NCL App does not rely on internet. It only uses the ship's wifi system, which is an entirely different thing from the ship's internet service. 

 

We do not bother with the streaming package, but do usually get the unlimited internet package. On our last Getaway cruise, we upgraded it to two devices and my DW and I shared it. It worked fine for FB texting between us and emails as needed. To my surprise, SMS texting also worked between us and to shore based phone #'s, although I'm not sure why it did.

 

If you read these pages often you'll probably find that reports on the quality and service with the streaming package are all over the place. I don't see how it can be anything else, given the low bandwidth of the connection that's being shared with several thousand other users. 

[mking8288]

The newer/est "Cruise Norwegian" App is better, improved over the old "iConcierge" App, over the ship's inTRAnet (Cisco & Lenovo industrial-graded hardware/servers) - and updated more frequently with rolling bug fixes & enhanced/refined.  Depending on your needs & expectations, is a nicer product as a whole.  The bottleneck is upstream with NCL's satellite technologies, fallen behind Royal, Princess, Carnival & MSC's comparable & competititve service tiers.  

 

WiFi over inTERnet, including streaming, is slow, sluggish & frequently below acceptable and minimum threshold for reliable video & streaming - high latency & packet losses not helping ... the system as a whole burdened with congestions and more users than it can support vis-a-vis capacity/bandwidth.  It is fine for basic web surfing, email and basic needs over such a narrow connection, stretching what we consider "broadband" these days - think copper, analog DSL over a twisted RJ-11 thin pair of wires, 15 to 20+ years ago.  "Improved" but not something that I would waste money on, not for $30 to $35 a day per user/device unless it is deeply discounted or subsidized or get reimbursed as a necessary/deductible business expenses.  

[perditax]

(General PSA: don't forget to speak with the IT dude in the guest services area to get reimbursed for the days the service is down.)