AZURA ON BOARD INTERNET

[Orianababes]

Shortly taking family on Azura, and 4 of that group have some element of need for internet. Don’t get me wrong I’m not talking about spending 25 hours a day staring at a mobile phone!
 

interested to hear how good internet service is on board. Accept that there will be areas of poor reception. Would very much appreciate recent actual experience from pax who have been on Azura in last couple of months

 

Thanks for any help 

[david63]

Not specifically Azura related but the Internet packages have changed slightly and when you buy a package it asks for how many devices you want to be able to use the package. You pay for each additional device.

 

You can, of course, just buy the package for one device and then keep logging on/off from all of the other devices.

 

What I do is take a mobile hotspot which I connect to the internet than all devices can use this at the same time - the restriction being that it only works whilst in the cabin.

[pennib]

When we were on Azura at Christmas and New Year (2021) we signed up for their internet as we like to download the newspaper. The service was appalling and apart from anything else they did not have an internet advisor on the ship. We got our money back and had to rely on WiFi at ports. Things might have improved now after 6 months but don’t bank on it.

[LinniB]

My brother in law needed to use the internet for his business on our Azura cruise in May and it was absolutely fine 

[ferretktf]

Transatlantic in April was shockingly poor. I got a refund after 3 days of dial-up speed at best (and more commonly nothing)

[davecttr]

6 hours ago, ferretktf said:

Transatlantic in April was shockingly poor. I got a refund after 3 days of dial-up speed at best (and more commonly nothing)

That's capacity limits as the ship will be using a satellite link. Faster alternatives using satellite 'swarms' have been trialed but that system is designed for low latitudes so not likely to be installed in a P&O ship

[ferretktf]

16 hours ago, davecttr said:

That's capacity limits as the ship will be using a satellite link. Faster alternatives using satellite 'swarms' have been trialed but that system is designed for low latitudes so not likely to be installed in a P&O ship

Interesting … does it not use a satellite link everywhere? Or would this have been a ‘special’ one due to being mid Atlantic?

 

[davecttr]

8 hours ago, ferretktf said:

Interesting … does it not use a satellite link everywhere? Or would this have been a ‘special’ one due to being mid Atlantic?

 

Apparently these satellite swarms orbit at low altitude so in addition to offering more capacity they also have faster connection times because the distance between the receiving dish and the satellites is a lot less than a geostationary satellite. Their main purpose is to provide internet cover in areas lacking cover. I read about this a few years ago and it will,be better now?

[FatBoy20]

In March on Ventura poor connection & price had doubled to £15 per 24hrs!. P&O trying to get back the losses of the pandemic!.

[pennib]

It is all very puzzling. I can remember booking a 2 week package on P&O back in 2010/2011 for about £60. It was absolutely fine. The only thing you had to remember was to log out after you had done what you wanted. Why is that type of package not available now? Also, several other cruise lines are offering Free WiFi. How do they do it and why can’t P&O?

[Gettingwarmer]

5 minutes ago, pennib said:

Also, several other cruise lines are offering Free WiFi. How do they do it and why can’t P&O?

I don’t know of any. Some offer free WiFi under a package extra or all inclusive but the price of the cruise will be much higher. 

[david63]

5 hours ago, pennib said:

several other cruise lines are offering Free WiFi. How do they do it and why can’t P&O?

I doubt that any cruise line offers "free" WiFi - what they offer is WiFi that you do not pay extra for, but it will be built into the overall price.

5 hours ago, Gettingwarmer said:

I don’t know of any.

Silversea for one.

[Gettingwarmer]

17 minutes ago, david63 said:

Silversea for one.

Ok  I’m sure your right. However the question was “why can’t P&O”. Well they could if they charged Silversea prices. i.e all inclusive as I said. 

Edited July 20, 2022 by Gettingwarmer

[davecttr]

48 minutes ago, david63 said:

I doubt that any cruise line offers "free" WiFi - what they offer is WiFi that you do not pay extra for, but it will be built into the overall price.

Silversea for one.

The cruise line know what their cost is to provide WiFi. Divide that cost by the number of cabins and add it to the fare and you get 'free' Wifi

[david63]

9 hours ago, davecttr said:

The cruise line know what their cost is to provide WiFi. Divide that cost by the number of cabins and add it to the fare and you get 'free' Wifi

That is so but probably not quite as simple.

 

Currently on P&O ships you have to pay a high fee to use WiFi which is a way of restricting its use. If you included it in the price making it "free" then everybody would use it meaning that the quality would be a lot worse than it is now, thus meaning that the actual connection would need to be improved (if it could) which would be an additional cost, which in turn would increase the price of the cruise.

 

P&O's objective is to keep headline prices as low as possible so adding anything is a no, no

[Josy1953]

23 hours ago, david63 said:

If you included it in the price making it "free" then everybody would use it meaning that the quality would be a lot worse than it is now

You have stated exactly the problems that we saw with the "free WiFi" on Princess.  We were "fortunate" in that we were on a port intensive cruise so we usually used free WiFi ashore when ever we could.  We don't rely on WiFi for anything important so we can wait for several days for anything that we want but judging by the number of people we saw typing on phones and tablets there were a lot of people who needed to use the ship WiFi.