Starlink rolling out, please post ship, latency, and bandwidth you are seeing.

[cruisequeen4ever]

Speed Test shows 2.89 on the Enchanted while in port today. I have to say that the internet has been consistent and useable the whole time thus far, exceeding all past internet experiences we have had on Princess. My hubby has even made some Wi-Fi video calls successfully. 

[MissP22]

6 hours ago, cruisequeen4ever said:

Speed Test shows 2.89 on the Enchanted while in port today. I have to say that the internet has been consistent and useable the whole time thus far, exceeding all past internet experiences we have had on Princess. My hubby has even made some Wi-Fi video calls successfully. 

Has he downloaded any movies or TV programs?

[antsp]

[antsp]

Sky Princess northern Europe 

[LACruiser88]

On the Emerald two days from Hawaii...

 

[outtoseacruise]

Presently on Enchanted Princess and after 3 days the internet sucks. In Gibraltar today I ended up working off my T-Mobile Hotspot it was so bad. What I am finding is they appear to be running with dual WAN presently. My laptop is getting Starlink, but my S22 Ultra is getting SES/o3b. The weird thing also is the latency and bandwidth appear to be better with SES? I saw better latency & speeds last month on MSC with SES and Odyssey with Starlink. 

I spoke to one of the Officers tonight at the Captain's Circle Party and the technology went over his head. He is arranging a meeting with some of their IT people tomorrow to see if they even realize this? It is possible with a dual WAN Router, my thinking is whoever set it up may not be the brightest bulb and SES & Starlink could be causing a conflict with each other? In all the ships I have been on since the rollout last September with Starlink, I have never seen both providers active at the same time on any ship (Royal or Princess).

These result may be OK for Aunt Bee or Uncle Fred sending pics to family or their FB or Insta accounts. Those of us that are the new generation of cruisers need to be connected. It just took 4 attempts to be able to talk to one of my employees over my IP Phone. 15 cruises since last September on Starlink installed ships and this is the worst I have seen. Between calls and Zoom it's totally unacceptable. 

Edited July 10, 2023 by outtoseacruise
.

[Bgwest]

2 minutes ago, outtoseacruise said:

He is arranging a meeting with some of their IT people tomorrow

Please loop back with us and share what you learned. Very interested in your conversation with the IT people. 

[outtoseacruise]

9 minutes ago, Bgwest said:

Please loop back with us and share what you learned. Very interested in your conversation with the IT people. 

I was also talking to a couple that have been on for 2 weeks working. They advised all they have seen is SES the last 2 weeks. 

[outtoseacruise]

3 hours ago, Bgwest said:

Please loop back with us and share what you learned. Very interested in your conversation with the IT people. 

I actually just went nuclear on this and emailed Princess Corp. I hit John Padgett, Collin Steinke, & Lorna Warren with an email. This will bypass all the silly BS of bobbleheads who are afraid to speak up in the chain of command onboard. 

[Bgwest]

3 hours ago, outtoseacruise said:

I actually just went nuclear on this and emailed Princess Corp. I hit John Padgett, Collin Steinke, & Lorna Warren with an email. This will bypass all the silly BS of bobbleheads who are afraid to speak up in the chain of command onboard. 

Will be interesting to see where you get the most traction. With the Princess brass or the onboard IT people. 

[KarmaCruisers]

4 hours ago, outtoseacruise said:

I actually just went nuclear on this and emailed Princess Corp. I hit John Padgett, Collin Steinke, & Lorna Warren with an email. This will bypass all the silly BS of bobbleheads who are afraid to speak up in the chain of command onboard. 

If you think these people actually read emails you’re on one…they have EA’s that “sort” their email.

The issue of StarLink/SES on at the same time..they could have it set to Active/Active so it’s load-balancing between the two ISP’s. (Some of our offshore call centers have it set that way)

The only resolution is these cruise lines pay up for more bandwidth; or less cruisers purchase the internet package. (But you’ve also got ship crew who have phones sucking up bandwidth too)

 

It’s gotta be possible too..because for a short while in our new office in Oakland, we were using MonkeyBrains as an ISP, over satellite and we’re able to provide 50Mbps to 1000 employees at once…so..do the math..even 10Mbps is fine for MOST tech work.

Edited July 11, 2023 by KarmaCruisers

[KarmaCruisers]

To add..honestly you’d probably have better luck tweeting at Elon, showing him your results on Princess (that is using HIS BABY STARLINK)..from what I can tell he doesn’t like his reputation tarnished…

[outtoseacruise]

7 hours ago, Bgwest said:

Will be interesting to see where you get the most traction. With the Princess brass or the onboard IT people. 

I also filled out the online form the HD had with a QR Code for any issues he should be aware of. It is definitely a Princess issue with their network/equipment. I have messaged friends on Symphony and Odyssey in the Med and they are not experiencing the same issues. I also know from last month on MSC Seashore (SES) their latency and bandwidth was something that I could work off of. I have done the shotgun effect to both shoreside and onboard. I also did just get a read receipt from one of the recipients shoreside.

[Honolulu Blue]

On the off chance that some people here are interested in Carnival ships, I posted a thread on their Brand Ambassador John Heald's list of the ships on that line that have already had Starlink installed.  Here it is:

 

[Bgwest]

11 hours ago, KarmaCruisers said:

If you think these people actually read emails you’re on one…

Nonsense

[outtoseacruise]

I just met with the Digital Communications Manager, he is a nice guy and we talked for a bit. He was also shocked when I showed him the IP for SES when he was getting Starlink on his. He isn't a tech or an IT person and a lot of what we talked about went over his head. I also rolled through the last 9+  months of Starlink results in my history and he was amazed at some of the results. I asked him to get with the HD since I also copied him on the issues. Unfortunately it is definitely over his paygrade. 

Still waiting on someone from Santa Clarita or the HD at least to touch base with me on this or reply. Unfortunately they have pretty much ghosted like a cheap Tinder date.  

If all else fails they probably won't like the Vlog I will upload on YouTube when I get on Symphony this weekend with their Starlink that is working.

Princess claims "The Best Wi-Fi at Sea. MedallionNet Wi-Fi is fast, reliable and wherever you are.". 

 

Edited July 11, 2023 by outtoseacruise
.

[Btimmer]

21 minutes ago, outtoseacruise said:

I just met with the Digital Communications Manager, he is a nice guy and we talked for a bit. He was also shocked when I showed him the IP for SES when he was getting Starlink on his. He isn't a tech or an IT person and a lot of what we talked about went over his head. I also rolled through the last 9+  months of Starlink results in my history and he was amazed at some of the results. I asked him to get with the HD since I also copied him on the issues. Unfortunately it is definitely over his paygrade. 

Still waiting on someone from Santa Clarita or the HD at least to touch base with me on this or reply. Unfortunately they have pretty much ghosted like a cheap Tinder date.  

If all else fails they probably won't like the Vlog I will upload on YouTube when I get on Symphony this weekend with their Starlink that is working.

Princess claims "The Best Wi-Fi at Sea. MedallionNet Wi-Fi is fast, reliable and wherever you are.". 

 

On our recent Regal Princess cruise I observed the very slow Starlink speeds and the deck officer I spoke with who was working on the project had no clue as to why the speeds were so slow.

[desertdwellingsailor]

On 5/10/2023 at 10:09 AM, outtoseacruise said:

Last week it looks like they flipped the switch on Discovery Princess and Starlink was spotted onboard.

This is so funny. I was trying to see if they would Have Starlink on our trip but didn't find anything about it. We were on Discovery Princess April 30-May 6 in Alaska and I didn't notice the Wi-Fi being especially good but I didn't know to check for Starlink. Maybe we were on the last cruise without it!

[outtoseacruise]

Coral Princess is across from us in Marseille today. I took the below pics of her upper decks and even after blowing them up a bit it doesn't appear Coral has any Starlink antennas onboard yet.

[outtoseacruise]

On Enchanted Princess it appears there are only 6 Starlink antennas mounted. 2 of the mounting brackets are missing an antenna.

Still no response from anyone shoreside or onboard regarding the issues with Starlink. I was down at Guest Services an hour ago and asked them to tell the Hotel Director I was looking for him. My guess is he will never get the message?

[outtoseacruise]

Finally got a call and acknowledgement and will have a meeting at 8:15 AM. When they called my cabin a few minutes ago they advised the SES had been turned off months ago. I told her that is pretty much impossible since the SES IP was showing up in test still. What I did notice was this afternoon we did have a brief period where the their wasn't any internet. It just so happened shortly their after my phone no longer showed the SES IP and was now replaced with a Starlink IP. I also told her that another guest doing B2B had also been seeing SES as the provider. 

Now it appears whatever they changed they messes something up totally onboard with the network. The below screen shots are what going onboard now. It appears that SES is back on again. This is after they just told me it has been off for months. I tried to explain the only way the SES IP can show up is if it's on. It went right over their heads. 

I will see how tomorrow AM goes, I don't expect to see this resolved. The contacts I have been emailing this info to at Carnival Corp and Princess Corporate appear to be rattling cages onboard. I just asked to have this escalated to someone in IT shoreside to help the onboard IT get this resolved. 

[Coffeeluvr05]

I'm super excited that Princess has Starlink now!  Although, I'm also concerned that it sounds like their onboard IT staff is not super qualified to deal with technical issues.  At least, the scenario I'm reading about in the post by @outtoseacruise is not giving me any confidence in them.  When we sailed on the Sky Princess in 2019 (obviously no Starlink) we had amazing internet when we did the inaugural transatlantic crossing.  We were doing black friday shopping, streaming movies, facetiming, you name it!  Maybe the bandwidth was better at that time when they were more flush with cash AND there were less people so heavily using the wifi as well back then.  But ever since then it has been horrible.  Our last Princess sailing last fall on the Majestic we just asked them to refund the internet portion of our Plus package because the internet was unusable.  I now have hope!  Yay!

[Steelers36]

5 hours ago, outtoseacruise said:

It went right over their heads.

I read most of your recent posts.  I do think that PCL has let go of their IT managers that knew something at least.  I suspect most/all of the on board IT staff are really there to help folks get connected with their smart devices that are not very tech savvy.  I am thinking they don't have people on board permanently that have the full smarts on networking, etc.

[KarmaCruisers]

4 hours ago, Coffeeluvr05 said:

I'm super excited that Princess has Starlink now! 

Don’t be too excited; it’s StarLink in name only..they didn’t pay for enough bandwidth to satisfy all ships needs.

imagine upgrading to a cable modem, capable of speeds up to 10Gig!…but you paid for their cheapest package..10Mbps (yes, 1000x slower)…that’s what princess has done..Paid for the StarLink name..but they’re absolute cheapest offering possible. 
times are tough; those shareholders demand results! (We want our CCL back to $40 a share!)

Edited July 13, 2023 by KarmaCruisers

[KarmaCruisers]

51 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

I read most of your recent posts.  I do think that PCL has let go of their IT managers that knew something at least.  I suspect most/all of the on board IT staff are really there to help folks get connected with their smart devices that are not very tech savvy.  I am thinking they don't have people on board permanently that have the full smarts on networking, etc.

I would bet dollars to donuts that Princess division of CCL; has NO “IT” staff in FTE status and just does piece-meal work as needed.

and the “onboard” IT staff..unfortunately less knowledgeable than your local GeekSquad.

Sad times.