Starlink is online on the Discovery Princess

[MissP22]

10 hours ago, billco said:

Here are some of Sapphire’s antennas. Already we have naysayers. Right now I can do streaming in Alaska that I have never been able to do. It wouldn’t surprise me that the speed is throttled so they can sell premium down the road.

 

 

I suspect they will be selling faster speeds for a price, possibly even including it with the Premium package. 

[VibeGuy]

I have every reason to believe traffic shaping is in use to make sure everyone gets 2.5mbps or so.   Everybody gets 2.5, nobody gets 50, but nobody gets zero, either.
 

Each Starlink terminal has some hard limits as to how much data they’ll handle (both the radios and the embedded network gear) which is why they’re deploying multiple antennae and I suspect there’s some clever management to make sure each one is using different uplink channels to avoid interference.   The conventional MEO/GEO gear absolutely handles more data on the uplink and downlink but the service is WILDLY oversubscribed for the next eight months or more. 
 

Internet responsiveness at sea is more than just a speed test - it’s latency, it’s packet loss, it’s delivered bandwidth.   If they can deliver 3mbpa with low latency to every user on the ship who wants it, and do so without regard to latitude or how full the ship is, that’s terrific. Also, Starlink “cells”, for lack of a better term, are much smaller than those of O3B or GEO networks, so they’re less affected by the presence of other users more than 500 miles away.  
 

I’m shocked how fast this is rolling out.  I honestly did not expect Princess ships on the Alaska run this summer to have Starlink.   The maritime hardware seems to be in much greater supply than anyone outside Starlink expected. 

Edited May 5, 2023 by VibeGuy

[VibeGuy]

14 hours ago, Jersey42 said:

mirror image

That ping time is utterly remarkable and the jitter breathtaking. 

[Mercruiser]

Hubbard Glacier is too far north to have good Starlink speeds.

 

Here is a screen capture from https://satellitemap.space/

showing the Starlink satellites as white dots. The uplink ground stations are the red dots. To make Starlink work, your ship needs to send a signal to the satellite (white dot) and back down to an uplink station (red dot) where it connects to the Internet. The vast majority of Starlink satellites are in an elliptical orbit that provides coverage for the entire earth up to the 60 degree latitudes These are the numerous white dots at the bottom of the screen capture. Anywhere north of 60 degrees will NOT have coverage from these satellites. In 2021, they started to launch some satellites in polar obits. These will provide coverage at the extreem northern and southern latitudes.. These are the four white dots you can see towards the top of this screen capture.

 

[Mercruiser]

Here is a thread I started on the Azamara board. As you can read, Azamara Onward (former Pacific Princess) is getting speeds in excess of 95 Mbps, see posts 36, 37.  I mention this to show you what the possible speeds are for Starlink Maritime when the ship is at normal latitudes.

 

 

 

[neverbeenhere]

10 hours ago, AZjohn said:

Just for fun and giggles I ran a speed test at home on my iPad.

No doubt about it, I’m too spoiled 😂

 

Actually, I don't think you are spoiled. I think you are getting what you pay for, while most of us are getting scrap for speed.

[neverbeenhere]

My high speed office is at 291.7 this morning with 32.9 upload.

[Yowman]

3 hours ago, neverbeenhere said:

My high speed office is at 291.7 this morning with 32.9 upload.

 

 

My (home) office:

 

[AZjohn]

14 minutes ago, Yowman said:

 

 

My (home) office:

 

Damn...You're on fire over there😁

[Mercruiser]

Yes, I could also buy gigabit Internet service.  But I'd much rather spend the money on cruises.

[Ynox]

I'm on Sky tomorrow. Interested to see given it's just out of dry dock whether it's got Starlink now or if it's still using SES (and probably SES geo, yay for 700ms ping knowing my luck). 

A few people on this thread seem to know what they're talking about (kudos to Mercruiser and Vibeguy). I'll have a laptop with me so I'll see if I can grab a speed test if it's Starlink - will be off the coast of France and Spain.

[billco]

This is Starlink outside the Wells Fargo office in Skagway 59.4572° N this morning 

 

[Mercruiser]

2 hours ago, billco said:

This is Starlink outside the Wells Fargo office in Skagway 59.4572° N this morning 

 

 

Deleted

 

 

 

Edited May 5, 2023 by Mercruiser

[Mercruiser]

3 hours ago, billco said:

This is Starlink outside the Wells Fargo office in Skagway 59.4572° N this morning 

 

These are very good results for such a northerly location, specially with all the tall mountains that surround Skagway.

 

Edited May 5, 2023 by Mercruiser

[outtoseacruise]

Just off Royal Princess this morning and Grand Princess last Monday. Both ships have the installation techs onboard and equipment. The officers I spoke with didn't know much more than they have been told it should be active by the end of the month.

Edited May 6, 2023 by outtoseacruise

[Rick&Jeannie]

27 minutes ago, outtoseacruise said:

Just off Royal Princess this morning and Grand Princess last Monday. Both ships have the installation techs onboard and equipment.

Well...that's certainly a good sign!  I guess that answers the speculation that it was just a "trial" rollout for the Discovery...

[Yowman]

Looking forward to enjoying usable connectivity on Enchanted in Sep/Oct

 

[Jeter02]

On 5/5/2023 at 4:32 PM, Ynox said:

I'm on Sky tomorrow. Interested to see given it's just out of dry dock whether it's got Starlink now or if it's still using SES (and probably SES geo, yay for 700ms ping knowing my luck). 

A few people on this thread seem to know what they're talking about (kudos to Mercruiser and Vibeguy). I'll have a laptop with me so I'll see if I can grab a speed test if it's Starlink - will be off the coast of France and Spain.

Great! Please keep us updated I'm on the sky in a few short weeks. 

[milogurd]

This?

[MissP22]

18 hours ago, Yowman said:

Looking forward to enjoying usable connectivity on Enchanted in Sep/Oct

 

I didn't hear anything about the Enchanted yet.

[outtoseacruise]

What I have found from experiencing Starlink on Royal Caribbean is the speeds are totally inconsistent ship to ship in the same locations or next to each other when comparing it with friends docked next to each other in Nassau or CocoCay. I have also found that the newest ship in the fleet with the newest intranet technology also doesn't have the best bandwidth and latency compared to older ships? 

 

The best Starlink performing ships since Royal Caribbean rolled out Starlink that I have found are:

Adventure, Liberty, & Mariner.

 

The worst Starlink performing ships since Royal Caribbean rolled out Starlink that I have found are:

Wonder (newest ship in the fleet) and Independence. From friends on the Ovation for the last month they are reporting horrible performance also.

 

It will be interesting to see how it performs on Princess? I work from my cabin remotely during the day for a few hours and need reliable connectivity to be able to work. My guess is we will see some of the Princess ships that are winners and some that aren't. 

 

My plans were to do a B2B2B2B on Princess either in Alaska or the Mediterranean this summer. These 2 cruises were a test last week to see if I could work on Royal Princess or Grand Princess and both were horrible with the old SES o3b system. Most of the time I had to use my T-Mobile hotspot when I could get a cellular signal to work when we were in port or close to land.

 

When Starlink on a ship works correctly it is incredible. When it doesn't it is just as bad as the old SES o3b. 

 

Once another ship or two have Starlink live on Princess lets probably start another thread and see what people are experiencing for latency and bandwidth? There are going to be some that think it's great when the numbers and performance show it isn't. The truth will be in those that use it for work into their corporate servers. 

[Mercruiser]

3 hours ago, outtoseacruise said:

 

My plans were to do a B2B2B2B on Princess either in Alaska or the Mediterranean this summer. These 2 cruises were a test last week to see if I could work on Royal Princess or Grand Princess and both were horrible with the old SES o3b system. Most of the time I had to use my T-Mobile hotspot when I could get a cellular signal to work when we were in port or close to land.

 

I love Alaska cruises. But I think Alaska cruise ports would be especially problematic for you. During the day, the cruisers outnumber the locals by a great deal, especially in Ketchikan, Skagway, and Icy Strait;  less so in Juneau. This causes the cellular internet to slow to a crawl when the ships are in port.  If you do try Alaska , you want to be able to switch between the two dominant carriers: AT&T and GCI (roaming partner for T-Mobile), depending on who's got the better bandwidth in your location. Since you already have T-Mobile, I'd probably take an extra cell phone to use as an AT&T hotspot. You also need a plan that allows you to use Canadian service, while enroute to/from Vancouver or Seattle. AT&T's plans generally include Canada data roaming.

 

Med cruises might work better since a) all EU countries allow seamless roaming,  b) every bit of land is covered with cell towers, c) it all entirely within the Starlink satellite coverage area. (Anything north of 60 degrees in Alaska will have limited Starlink satellite coverage.)

Edited May 7, 2023 by Mercruiser

[Kb55kb]

The speeds pretty much stayed between 2 and 2.5 Mbps even in Seattle this morning so it appears either princess is controlling the speed or their on board equipment is limited. But even at that I never had a struggle doing what I wanted to do on my phone. Every now and then a webpage took a few extra seconds to load or a video would stop briefly to buffer but this is definitely a huge improvement over the old system IMO and it was consistent all the way up to the Hubbard Glacier. 

[Jeter02]

30 minutes ago, Kb55kb said:

The speeds pretty much stayed between 2 and 2.5 Mbps even in Seattle this morning so it appears either princess is controlling the speed or their on board equipment is limited. But even at that I never had a struggle doing what I wanted to do on my phone. Every now and then a webpage took a few extra seconds to load or a video would stop briefly to buffer but this is definitely a huge improvement over the old system IMO and it was consistent all the way up to the Hubbard Glacier. 

A good question to ask for those sailing on a princess ship that has starlink in Alaska or Europe is are you able to stream any movies from your phone /device.

[Mercruiser]

44 minutes ago, Kb55kb said:

The speeds pretty much stayed between 2 and 2.5 Mbps even in Seattle this morning so it appears either princess is controlling the speed or their on board equipment is limited. But even at that I never had a struggle doing what I wanted to do on my phone. Every now and then a webpage took a few extra seconds to load or a video would stop briefly to buffer but this is definitely a huge improvement over the old system IMO and it was consistent all the way up to the Hubbard Glacier. 

That is very good.

 

Azamara seems to be taking a different approach of not limiting bandwidth to individual users. Many have shown speeds of 90+ Mbps using speedtest.net. This is probably easier to do on their "R" class ships with only 700 passengers. 

 

I'm not criticizing Princess' approach. It's just different. Not worse. I'd be perfectly happy with a consistent 2+ Mbps. Where I get nervous is when folks ask if they can stream video. Hundreds of passengers streaming video is the the one sure way to bring Starlink to its knees. 

Edited May 7, 2023 by Mercruiser