NCLH Will Be Upgrading To Starlink

[eileeshb]

16 hours ago, ontheweb said:

Prima in August. Will it be ready?

I'm suspecting the ships sailing from US ports will be amongst the earliest to get setup and I see Prima is sailing from Canaveral in February. It may depend on whether they'll have multiple teams doing the installs or a single team going ship to ship and of course availability of equipment from Starlink. 

[ontheweb]

1 hour ago, eileeshb said:

I'm suspecting the ships sailing from US ports will be amongst the earliest to get setup and I see Prima is sailing from Canaveral in February. It may depend on whether they'll have multiple teams doing the installs or a single team going ship to ship and of course availability of equipment from Starlink. 

I hope you are right.

[acct1975]

Will be on the Joy in July. I really hope they get to that ship before then. Having a more reliable internet connection would be nice. I'd be curious to hear how people are faring once more ships have it. Cautiously optimistic.

[ah5050]

I know BA already has it up and running. We are on the transatlantic in April. Really hoping to have enough coverage to work on sea days. Fingers crossed!

[blestnest]

FWIW, my husband and I took a cruise (Caribbean) on Celebrity Reflection January 15-22, 2023. They had recently changed from Xcelerate to Starlink. We have purchased their internet packages in the past and we were always pleased with the ability to get our emails and browse the internet. This cruise was completely different.  Starlink was AWFUL! We couldn’t even access the internet most of the time, and simple emails took hours to download. We tried it all hours of the day/night. We didn’t realize the ship had changed over to a new service, but after a few days of abysmal service we decided to go to the Internet cafe to see if there was anything we could do to improve our experience. We were told they had installed Starlink a few weeks before our cruise and cruisers were not happy with the changes. We just got off the NCL Escape this morning (February 4th). We also had a Caribbean itinerary on this cruise. We had purchased the unlimited basic internet, not the premium version. It was SO MUCH better than the Starlink on Celebrity. It was not great, but literally many times faster than Starlink. I’ve always disliked NCL’s internet, but I’d rather have slow than non-existent! The fastest internet we have experienced on the high seas is VOOM (RCCL). 

[fshagan]

Here's the coverage map for Starlink Maritime. Not sure what corporate customers pay for a ship the size of a cruise ship, but the price for boats is $5,000 equipment and $5,000 a month. I suspect both hardware and monthly fees would be higher for cruise ships. Their website is at https://www.starlink.com/maritime