Wifi moving to Starlink

[Ombud]

Along with increased pricing there's a new carrier

price comparison:

Princess - $15 (before 50% discount)

Royal Caribbean - $16 

Celebrity - $20 (before 10-35% discount)

Norwegian- $25 per day

Edited February 9, 2023 by Ombud

[antsp]

Same price as it is at the moment 

[Rick&Jeannie]

At least the wheels are turning!  (Seemingly...)

Edited February 9, 2023 by Rick&Jeannie

[Rick&Jeannie]

Of course...that press release very well may have been put out by the same folks who gave us "The Best WiFi at Sea"! 😄

[Ombud]

27 minutes ago, antsp said:

Same price as it is at the moment 

Price increased from 10 to 15 once announced. No additional increase from where it is now

[LACruiser88]

Carnival Corp Press release...

 

 

 

Edited February 9, 2023 by LACruiser88

[malba2366]

Does anyone know when Princess is changing to Starlink?  Changing to starlink will improve latency, but will not automatically improve the connection speeds...it will depend on how much bandwidth Princess is willing to pay for per ship.

[LACruiser88]

14 minutes ago, malba2366 said:

Does anyone know when Princess is changing to Starlink?  Changing to starlink will improve latency, but will not automatically improve the connection speeds...it will depend on how much bandwidth Princess is willing to pay for per ship.

There has been no mention as to when Princess will start to switch over to Starlink.

[MissP22]

2 hours ago, Rick&Jeannie said:

Of course...that press release very well may have been put out by the same folks who gave us "The Best WiFi at Sea"! 😄

What will the new slogan be now ??😁 LOL

[J0Y0US]

16 minutes ago, MissP22 said:

What will the new slogan be now ??😁 LOL

 

Everyone is moving to Starlink it seems.

 

From those who have been on other lines that already have Starlink it seemingly is a good upgrade but who knows as it rolls in to older ships and different brands.

 

Starlink really is the primary future of remote internet though based on the tech and how its deployed.

[Rick&Jeannie]

49 minutes ago, MissP22 said:

What will the new slogan be now ??😁 LOL

"Let Us Provide the Brightest Satellite in the Sky for your Browsing Pleasure!" (We reserve the right to dim the lights when needed.)

[Musky Ike]

1 hour ago, MissP22 said:

What will the new slogan be now ??😁 LOL

Sail the ocean with Princess while you surf among the stars.

[MissP22]

1 hour ago, Rick&Jeannie said:

"Let Us Provide the Brightest Satellite in the Sky for your Browsing Pleasure!" (We reserve the right to dim the lights when needed.)

 

1 hour ago, Musky Ike said:

Sail the ocean with Princess while you surf among the stars.

Either one sounds OK with me as long as I can download my movies in less than 4 hours time. 

[Princessfan20]

2 hours ago, Musky Ike said:

Sail the ocean with Princess while you surf among the stars.

 

More like "Your Connection Is Lost In Space" knowing how the Princess crack tech team does things.

[jeromep]

Everyone is on a roll in this thread.  I can't beat any of these comments.

 

That said, Starlink, while a modern wonder, isn't necessarily going to be the magic bullet that it seems like it will be.  It has only been within the past 3 to 6 months that Starlink has opened up to mobile users, basically RVers.  The various RVers I follow all report mixed results with Starlink depending on where they are set up, their surrounding environment, and Starlink equipped camper density.  If you are in an RV park someplace, you might not have the quality of connect you might expect.  I've heard of RV resorts that were full of campers and so many had Starlink that speeds were slow because the Starlink cell overhead was basically saturated.  Then there are stories of people out boondocking amongst the trees, and while there is no population density, there are so many trees that the Starlink dish can barely read the sky to get enough satellites to talk to to make a decent connection.

 

While being at sea you won't be dealing with Starlink unit density issues (like in the RV park), and you have a very clear view of the sky (no trees), so the on-board Starlink dish has a lot of satellites to connect to, I think the real issue is going to be density of on board use.  I can't help but wonder if an on-board Starlink system can handle the Internet needs of 3000+ users all at once?

[cr8tiv1]

4 hours ago, jeromep said:

While being at sea you won't be dealing with Starlink unit density issues (like in the RV park), and you have a very clear view of the sky (no trees), so the on-board Starlink dish has a lot of satellites to connect to, I think the real issue is going to be density of on board use.  I can't help but wonder if an on-board Starlink system can handle the Internet needs of 3000+ users all at once?

 

More reasons NOT to cruise Princess' MEGA ships.  Princess should think about designing smaller ships.  I know, I know, I know...in my dreams.  Hey, let's call the next class of ship:  Dream Ships.  Less than 2000 passengers, Window Suites on Fiesta Deck, no class distinctions, Alfredo's, an International Cafe, walk around Promenade Deck, and a no smoking casino.

 

My apologies.  I just connected the thoughts:  holding Princess accountable for "Best Wifi at Sea".  Now back to regular programming.

Edited February 10, 2023 by cr8tiv1

[Thrak]

7 hours ago, MissP22 said:

 

Either one sounds OK with me as long as I can download my movies in less than 4 hours time. 

 

I will never understand why someone who is on a cruise needs to download a movie. If I wanted a movie that wasn't available onboard I'd download it before the cruise. Of course I don't primarily cruise to watch movies - especially ones I could watch at home. It's no wonder people always find the Internet connection to be so slow - people are downloading movies. </boggle>

[VibeGuy]

5 hours ago, jeromep said:

 I can't help but wonder if an on-board Starlink system can handle the Internet needs of 3000+ users all at once?

First a technical answer. 
 

There’s one starlink satellite optimally serving a given spot at a given moment.  Based on published data about their spot beams they can deliver 4Gbps to a circle 9 miles in radius.  That’s enough to give roughly 5000 streaming video connections simultaneously to tablets or phones at 720p quality.    Each satellite simultaneously serves eight spot beams.  Assuming a sort of optimized pattern of spot beams, I don’t actually have any worries that Starlink has enough downstream capacity to positively soak the ship in bits, and their constellation is at best 25% complete.   They can also do some clever stuff where they put two spot beams into the same circle, or share single beams over multiple circles.  

The Starlink terminal as currently designed is not capable of handling all that much bandwidth, which is why we’ve been seeing solutions with multiple terminals.  My casual guess is that Carnival and Starlink will target delivering 1-2gbps per ship with four terminals as a starting point. 
 

Now a business answer.  SES Networks is not going to go silently into the night.  They have made a massive investment in their M3Power MEO service and it’s coming online this year with a modicum of luck. I suspect what you’re going to see is a hybrid solution with SES getting the mission-critical data payloads and the guest/crew getting routed onto Starlink by default with a reliability fallback onto M3Power, then O3B MEO (the current “best”) and then SES/Astra GEO (aka 2010’s finest) as a fail safe.
 

My casual guess is that it will take Carnival about a month to bring a ship up at first and they’ll steadily improve to one every two weeks, and they’ll eventually be able to field a couple of teams for each of the brand groups.  So HAL and Princess will share a couple of teams when they fully get up to speed, and thus Carnival and AIDA/Costa/Cunard will each have their teams.  So that says to me it’s at least a year, probably longer. 
 

Translation:   M3Power will be fixing things before Starlink is installed, and a huge number of problems will go away with M3Power, especially in the Mediterranean, Mexican Riviera and the Caribbean, where their execs have said the O3B MEO network is wildly over capacity. 

 

 

[Thrak]

If people would stop downloading movies and insane stuff like that perhaps the Internet connection wouldn't seem so incredibly slow. Why do so many people "need" to download movies, television shows, and crap like that? (If they really think they "need" this stuff why don't they download it at home before the cruise?) Why do so many people seem to "need" to do video calls? If people legitimately need to work that is one thing. I they just want to bog everything down with unnecessary jive why don't they just stay at home? It's a cruise. Get away from all of that jive and enjoy the cruise.

[Ombud]

Lots of posts that Princess internet is awful compared to other cruise lines, soon it'll be just like the other lines. Then what will ppl complain about?? 

[Roberto256]

12 hours ago, MissP22 said:

What will the new slogan be now ??😁 LOL

Faster than the fastest internet at sea.

[MissP22]

5 hours ago, Thrak said:

 

I will never understand why someone who is on a cruise needs to download a movie. If I wanted a movie that wasn't available onboard I'd download it before the cruise. Of course I don't primarily cruise to watch movies - especially ones I could watch at home. It's no wonder people always find the Internet connection to be so slow - people are downloading movies. </boggle>

Sorry. I didn't know it wasn't allowed. What things aren't allowed? Like Zoom, video calls, etc. ?

Are the internet rules written somewhere?

[billco]

6 hours ago, Thrak said:

If people would stop downloading movies and insane stuff like that perhaps the Internet connection wouldn't seem so incredibly slow. Why do so many people "need" to download movies, television shows, and crap like that? (If they really think they "need" this stuff why don't they download it at home before the cruise?) Why do so many people seem to "need" to do video calls? If people legitimately need to work that is one thing. I they just want to bog everything down with unnecessary jive why don't they just stay at home? It's a cruise. Get away from all of that jive and enjoy the cruise.

I kind of like the idea of the cruise line providing the resources to the best of its ability so that each person can enjoy their cruise in their own way without negatively impacting others. In other words, if people want to download movies or other uses of the internet I support increasing capacity vice telling them how to enjoy their cruise.

[Rick&Jeannie]

7 hours ago, Ombud said:

Lots of posts that Princess internet is awful compared to other cruise lines, soon it'll be just like the other lines. Then what will ppl complain about?? 

oh...I am quite certain we can fill that void!  (We always do!) 😄

[Wildcatllamas]

Last October, on my Discovery cruise, I had to do payroll for the my department where I work at. The internet on ship wouldn't even hold long enough to approve a single person. So I waited till we were in port and went to a Starbucks so I could finish.

 

On my cruise on Virgin back in 2021 I had absolutely no problem doing payroll while on the ship.

 

I have Starlink at home and it is amazing. A neighbor is an RVer and has Starlink and has never had a problem with it. So we shall see.