TheHomelessCruiser

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Maybe someone at top tier misunderstood the number of CAS on board announced at top tier versus the total passenger count. On the Nov 13 sailing the LA announced the total by saying "1,108 members on board" meaning that was the CAS population on board which is typically in the ballpark of around 50% of the total guest count.

The folks at SES/O3b must be cursing the fact they have to pay SpaceX to launch their birds when Starlink is stealing their customers and driving down satellite internet rates.

That doesn't sound like a Starlink issue if your WiFi connection is dropping. If your remain connected but can't reach the internet, that's a Starlink issue. Oversubscribed. During the shutdown they reduced bandwidth commitment to save money with only 100 crew on board. After restart they didn't return bandwidth commitment to pre-shutdown levels.

Many ships do this when the number of Pinnacles are above a threshold and they ban them from the Suite Lounge.

If they make it too cheap many will get it and many will suffer. Try inviting 4,000 people to your house and have everyone share your home internet connection. By setting the price right it controls the number of users which allows the limited throughput over satellite to work better.

That is currently how Starlink works. Everyone on land uses a gateway that is regional to their fixed location. For mobile users you transition from one regional gateway to the next as you are moving. For a ship that likely means changing gateways every few hours depending on what is available. The old satellite providers had high usage fees per GB so Royal implemented per user caps. Starlink doesn't charge per GB (yet) so it seems Royal is testing different approaches on different ships. As some ships have moved to Starlink some ships retained the per user caps (ex. Indy, Anthem), some ships doubled them (ex. Symphony) and some ships eliminated them (ex. Jewel, Freedom). No one knows where they'll land. My guess is they will sell upgrades to higher throughputs. The 4x2 old Surf and Stream may become "Voom Standard" or something and then they can introduce new $45 or $60 per day plans that are unlimited. "Voom Ultra" or something like that. Just a guess. At any rate right now Jewel blows away all Oasis and Quantum class ships. Who ever thought we'd see that happen? No one knows what they'll do long term.

Jewel is ten times faster than that now. Never though Jewel would outperform an Oasis class for internet.