Premium Internet question

[pmjnh]

One of our party will need to do a live chat with a class  he teaches back home. We will be on the Circle Hawaii cruise from San Diego. What can we expect for his ability to have an uninterrupted chat with students enroute to HI? 
 

thank you

[HAL4NOW]

We just got back from the Circle Hawaii cruise last month out of Vancouver. Premium Internet was totally out of service a couple of the days crossing back to Vancouver from Hawaii. The other days were spotty at best. I would not want to rely on service for anything necessary.

[IPB4IGO]

11 minutes ago, pmjnh said:

What can we expect for his ability to have an uninterrupted chat with students enroute to HI? 

Disappointment.

Sharing a satellite Internet connection with 2,000 of your closest friends is not conducive for reliable streaming. On one cruise this year, my wife was able to stream her favorite news programs with buffering every few minutes. On our last cruise (Hawaii, out of Vancouver) it was so slow that web pages would seldom load completely, and it was completely down for one day. OTOH, Wi-Fi calling worked well.

[Mary229]

Nope, HAL WiFi if pretty marginal anyway but out in the middle of the ocean it will be extremely limited.  When I worked at sea I always was up a 4 am to get my work done. 

[crystalspin]

1 hour ago, pmjnh said:

One of our party will need to do a live chat with a class he teaches back home. We will be on the Circle Hawaii cruise from San Diego. What can we expect for his ability to have an uninterrupted chat with students enroute to HI? 

Understand: the Premium Internet is the same internet as Social and Surf, just fewer sites and apps are blocked. Hawaii should be better than Alaska, though, because the ship's path will be closer to the the equatorial orbits of more communication satellites. 

 

My husband was able to make a conference call using VOIP (with no video, and it paused and stammered sometimes) from north of France. We did have Premium but don't know if it was necessary!

 

If your friend wants to go forward with this, he should definitely plan on Premium. It is possible to buy Premium ahead of time for just a little more than Surf on board. If you are booked with HIA, it is possible to upgrade the Surf to Premium on board; I do not know the cost.

 

Finally, I would take @Mary229at her word! She has done the research... Maybe 4am on the ship will be late enough in the morning for an Eastern Time zone's class to tune in?

[pmjnh]

Thank you all!

 

his best bet is to time it at an internet cafe or Starbucks in one of the ports.

Pre-purchasing premium is definitely the way to go for wifi.