*Sput*te*r not VOOM on Serenade OTS

When we boarded Serenade of the Seas in Ft Lauderdale, the VOOM internet service was very aggressively marketed, with huge posters and staffers in lime green shirts that shouted "ASK ME ABOUT WIFI". So I did. To be sure, I wasn't expecting to be able to stream or to even to do much that was very interactive. Before handing my seapass over, I spoke to one of the green shirt people and I explained my position: I monitor about 30 static web pages daily.* There is nothing fancy about them, nothing moves, sings or dances. I wanted to know whether the system would be up to that task, given the blackouts I'd experienced on TransAtlantics previously.

His answer was that the service was much better than any previous system, although it would slow down significantly in the satellite "black spots". Other than that, he assured me, the surf plan would always be good enough for me to monitor my thirty-some sites without too much inconvenience. On the basis of that advice, I purchased a surf package.

Well, it was agony that reminded me of early nineties dial-up. Nine years ago on a Celebrity, TA we had better serviced. VOOM served up repeated timeouts. Pages "hung". In mid-Atlantic, I gave VOOM the benefit of the doubt, and assumed when we emerged from "the black hole", probably after the Azores, things would improve. They didn't. Approaching the UK things were no better. In and on the coast of the English Channel (the most travelled shipping lane in the world) using the internet was still like watching ice melt. When, in the middle (literally) of Amsterdam, VOOM still wasn't good enough to let me work* I realized it was hopeless, and I planned to take my highly unsatisfactory experience up with Guest Relations.

At that point, this started being posted prominently in the dailies:

Had that been the message that the man in the green shirt had given me when I was trying to decide whether to spend my money on VOOM, I wouldn't have bothered. I never did expect anything the speed of home (although that's not what the posters, or the man in the green shirt would have had me believe). The message was clear: don't bother complaining, we aren't going to do anything about it. (Yes, cupcake class. Sweet!)

I contacted Royal Caribbean, and I got the predictable your-comments-are-important-to-us lineand they asked if I had taken it up with Guest Relations while I was still onboard. Why would I have done that? The notice in the daily made clear that they weren't going to do anything anyway. The nice folks from PR promised to look into it and get back to me. After a couple of weeks, I contacted them again, to have the nice lady from PR tell me this:

And I suppose that's that. My advice to anyone thinking of buying VOOM is: don't don't buy the package until you have tried it out onboard for a couple of days. The pre-sailing discount isn't worth the risk.

Seenie

* For those of you wondering why I'd feel the need to work on a vacation: I'm not chasing bucks. I am a volunteer administrator on a non-profit network of over thirty communities for people whose lives have been touched by rare diseases. Come visit us at www.bensfriends.org or www.bensfriends.org/community-list/ ! These communities are important to thousands of people who suffer the shock, loneliness, isolation and misery of having a disease that most people haven't even heard of. Some of those diseases are life-threatening, and all of them are life-altering. Someone's got to keep those community homefires burning: I'm one of a small team of volunteers, and I've made this my mission in retirement. The substantial amount of money that I spent on VOOM was out of pocket, although (full disclosure here) I did receive a very modest discount when I explained my work to the onboard staff.

My advice to anyone thinking of buying VOOM is: don't don't buy the package until you have tried it out onboard for a couple of days. The pre-sailing discount isn't worth the risk.

Kinda hard to try it without buying. And buying a 24 hr pass (the shortest available) may not be a total indicator what one may experience the rest of the trip.

I have found Voom to be very unpredictable, even on the same ship at different times in the same local. I've cruised Grandeur 3 times using Voom and Anthem once. Each time, I had the same device. Note that I got surf and stream vs. just the surf.

Anthem's O3B surprised me. I was able to stream video from various services (Netflix, Hulu and Xfinity) with a little bit of load lag, but once loaded, it streamed fairly reliably. I say reliably because there were other connection issues with the server itself.

Grandeur. 3 times, and each time was different with the same system. 1st time, slow, but I could stream Netflix and Hulu reliably but not Xfinity. Longer load time than Anthem, but once loaded the 1st two performed barely adequately. This was February of last year.

2nd time, July last year. Speeds extremely slow many times, but connection was there. I was able to stream video only intermittently as the speeds would vary to unusable speeds (we're talking pings of 1000ms + and download speeds of less than .5 mbps.

3rd time, April of this year. I was able to stream and speeds were for the most part consistent..however, connection to the server was marred by sudden disconnects with the inability to reconnect for up to 5 minutes each time. When it didn't disconnect, it worked like February of last year. I complained about it and a refund was offered to me, however, I also stated that I didn't want a refund, I want it to work (I was solo and this was my way of staying in touch with the wife). IT guy told me that it might be a setting that is causing me to get kicked off and when I asked him what setting it would, he evaded question. Puts serious doubt in my mind of what kind of IT guy he was. I did confirm that my issue was not normal as it was happening to both my laptop and my phone. End result was he gave me two codes and told me not to switch because normally, switching would cause the logged in device to disconnect.

My advice to anyone thinking of buying VOOM is: don't buy the package until you have tried it out onboard for a couple of days. The pre-sailing discount isn't worth the risk.

DW and I will be boarding Serenade this Sunday for an 11-day Arctic Circle cruise and will be keeping an eye on internet performance. Having done a Baltic cruise on Serenade a couple of years ago, we had a similar internet experience to that of OP. Being D+ members of C&A we have four days of free ship's internet between us, and those will be used during the four sea days on our journey. During port days we'll be using our subscriptions to Telenor, a good Norwegian telecoms provider. We'll be keeping track of ship's internet performance as well as the land-based Telenor performance.

Based on what you said about not bothering to complain to guest services because of the note in the daily, I’m assuming the answer to this is no, but did you by chance ask for your money back for the remaining days of your cruise? That’s what I would have done. I would have asked for money back for the whole thing, but would really only expect it back for the remaining days I hadn’t used it yet.

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Serenade has average service. Though certain areas or times of day, at sea, it is slower compared to other Royal ships...

Kinda hard to try it without buying. And buying a 24 hr pass (the shortest available) may not be a total indicator what one may experience the rest of the trip.

You're right. I should have said "buy it by the day for a few days" before buying the whole package.

Based on what you said about not bothering to complain to guest services because of the note in the daily, I’m assuming the answer to this is no, but did you by chance ask for your money back for the remaining days of your cruise? That’s what I would have done. I would have asked for money back for the whole thing, but would really only expect it back for the remaining days I hadn’t used it yet.

 

No, I didn't. I kept thinking it would get better tomorrow. For someone so old, I sure am naive. Once the notice went up in the daily, I knew there was no point.

I have found Voom to be very unpredictable, even on the same ship at different times in the same local. I've cruised Grandeur 3 times using Voom and Anthem once. Each time, I had the same device. Note that I got surf and stream vs. just the surf.

 

Anthem's O3B surprised me. I was able to stream video from various services (Netflix, Hulu and Xfinity) with a little bit of load lag, but once loaded, it streamed fairly reliably. I say reliably because there were other connection issues with the server itself.

 

Grandeur. 3 times, and each time was different with the same system. 1st time, slow, but I could stream Netflix and Hulu reliably but not Xfinity. Longer load time than Anthem, but once loaded the 1st two performed barely adequately. This was February of last year.

 

2nd time, July last year. Speeds extremely slow many times, but connection was there. I was able to stream video only intermittently as the speeds would vary to unusable speeds (we're talking pings of 1000ms + and download speeds of less than .5 mbps.

 

3rd time, April of this year. I was able to stream and speeds were for the most part consistent..however, connection to the server was marred by sudden disconnects with the inability to reconnect for up to 5 minutes each time. When it didn't disconnect, it worked like February of last year. I complained about it and a refund was offered to me, however, I also stated that I didn't want a refund, I want it to work (I was solo and this was my way of staying in touch with the wife). IT guy told me that it might be a setting that is causing me to get kicked off and when I asked him what setting it would, he evaded question. Puts serious doubt in my mind of what kind of IT guy he was. I did confirm that my issue was not normal as it was happening to both my laptop and my phone. End result was he gave me two codes and told me not to switch because normally, switching would cause the logged in device to disconnect.

There is a HUGE difference between "streaming" and "normal use" that the OP was posting about. Streaming is data that can be queued. Real Time Data (RTD) things like interactive voice calls and/or web page management or systems access is more difficult to ensure so your experiences with streaming probably aren't really applicable to the OPs concerns.

All Cruise systems naturally rely on satellite services and which of those are accessible to any particular solution so logically some areas of the world are easier to provide service to than others.

PS - I was part of the team that helped delivery THE very first consumer Satellite service available on a commercial cruise line & tied to service on their own private island (my part was that particular relay communication path) way back in 2003 or it may have been as late as 2005. I don't really recall the exact year

We'll be keeping track of ship's internet performance as well as the land-based Telenor performance.

Today is Day 2 of our 11 day Arctic Circle cruise, and our original plan was to avail ourselves of the first of our free internet. But taking a chance on 4G land based service, we changed our minds and opted for the Telenor internet, thus saving our free ship’s wifi until later. Our present location is N58.10235 E5.8809, about 20 nautical miles from the Norwegian coast near the town of Sogndalstrand. Ping is 321 ms, download speed 2.80 Mbps, upload speed 5.38 Mbps. We are presently in our cabin on Deck 10. On our balcony, download speed increases to well over 6 Mbps, with a straight line of sight to the Norwegian coast some 20 nm away. Won’t stay outdoors too long; it’s a somewhat windy day with a 25 knot headwind, with some nice white caps on the waves. Otherwise it’s a beautiful day, clear except for perhaps 10% of the sky covered by cloud.

Today is Day 2 of our 11 day Arctic Circle cruise, and our original plan was to avail ourselves of the first of our free internet. But taking a chance on 4G land based service, we changed our minds and opted for the Telenor internet, thus saving our free ship’s wifi until later. Our present location is N58.10235 E5.8809, about 20 nautical miles from the Norwegian coast near the town of Sogndalstrand. Ping is 321 ms, download speed 2.80 Mbps, upload speed 5.38 Mbps. We are presently in our cabin on Deck 10. On our balcony, download speed increases to well over 6 Mbps, with a straight line of sight to the Norwegian coast some 20 nm away. Won’t stay outdoors too long; it’s a somewhat windy day with a 25 knot headwind, with some nice white caps on the waves. Otherwise it’s a beautiful day, clear except for perhaps 10% of the sky covered by cloud.

Thanks for the info. The O3B system uses low orbit satellites. I think they are in place near the equator so the Caribbean is good but the farther north or south you are from the equator the worse the signal. You can’t get much farther north then you will be on a cruise ship.

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Thanks for your reply. We are now at N60.089 E4.183 (WSW of Bergen), still with a decent 4G signal, thanks to having our cabin on the starboard side of the ship, with direct line of sight access to land. Tonight we’ll start navigating upstream in the fjord that leads to Geiranger, where we hope to find an even better signal tomorrow. Wind has picked up to 40 knots headwind. Some motion in the ocean, but we have had worse conditions on Serenade in the Mediterranean.

We’re now at N61.497 E4.195, with roughly 60 miles to go to the entry point of the fjord leading to Geiranger. Speed has slowed down from around 22 kts to roughly 16 (no point in charging in at full speed, since we’re not supposed to dock until around 7 am). Still enjoying a good 4G signal, with reception at times up to 16 Mbps. So far no need to use ship’s wifi. Currently a headwind of around 30 kts.

Thanks for the info. The O3B system uses low orbit satellites. I think they are in place near the equator so the Caribbean is good but the farther north or south you are from the equator the worse the signal. You can’t get much farther north then you will be on a cruise ship.

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Serenade doesn’t have O3B.

Serenade doesn’t have O3B.

Thanks for the info. Someone mentioned O3B earlier and I assumed that is what we were talking about.

I was wrong but my info may be helpful for any ships with O3B sailing away from the equator.

My apologies if I misled anyone.

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I was wrong but my info may be helpful for any ships with O3B sailing away from the equator.

We have had discussion of that in the thread which tracks which ships have O3B. We've had reporting that confirms what O3B itself publishes in that the speeds drop off once above 45 deg latitude and the signal completely goes away above 60 degrees. That why Ovation (and all other ships) have to have a backup/alternative to O3B when she sails the Alaska runs.

Currently in Geiranger. Not using ship's wifi, instead staying with land based internet (Telenor). Ping 65 ms, download 25,1 Mbps, upload 4,04 Mbps. Tomorrow will be a sea day, crossing the Arctic Circle (roughly at latitude N66 degrees). As indicated in Biker's post above, O3b wouldn't have been of any use that far north. Depending on internet performance, I may have to switch to ship's "old-fashioned" wifi. Time will tell. Anyway, so far on this cruise I haven't had to spend any of our free ship's wifi allowance.

One thing to realize, there are two factors to internet "speed."

One is data transfer rate. The other is the "ping."

Ping is the time it takes your device to request something from the internet to getting a response. Due to the satellite connection, even with a fast data rate, the ping will be very slow. Last Aug we measured data rates of 5 MBPS on Grandeur, but the ping was running 250 - 280 ms. That means every time your device asks for something, it takes over 1/4 second to get a response.

Why does this matter? Because many web pages have lots of little bits, and they have to be requested by your device. So each one takes 1/4 second, and say the page has 100 elements, that is over 25 seconds. If there are 1000 elements, it is over 4 minutes.

The funny thing was on Grandeur was, streaming was fine (data rate was fast enough, and streaming does not do many requests), but loading Amazon main page was impossible (it must have over 1000 elements).

I have used it in the Caribbean twice (Celebrity and RC) and have had no major problems. No, it’s not all that fast. I was able to make voice calls using WiFi calling with little trouble.

Last Aug we measured data rates of 5 MBPS on Grandeur, but the ping was running 250 - 280 ms.

If you got a 250 ms ping on Grandeur you were probably not using the ship's WiFi - the best one can hope for on ships without O3B is about 600 ms. O3B ships have pings in the 200 ms range.

If you got a 250 ms ping on Grandeur you were probably not using the ship's WiFi - the best one can hope for on ships without O3B is about 600 ms. O3B ships have pings in the 200 ms range.

Yeah, all 3 times i've been on the Grandeur and I was happy if it was at 600 ms ping. I've gotten it as high as 1.1ms, just before it timed out.

On our way out of the fjord country, some ten miles SE of Ålesund. Still on Telenor 4G, ping 353 ms, download 22.3 Mbps, upload 24.8 Mbps. Current latitude is N62.385 degrees. Tomorrow is a sea day, next port is Tromsø on Thursday. Wouldn’t be surprised if when I wake up tomorrow we will have lost our 4G connection. If so, I’ll switch to ship’s wifi, FWIW. Tomorrow we’ll also cross the Arctic Circle. A ceremony is being planned to take place on Pool Deck in the early afternoon.

All I know is what Speed Test told me.

This morning DW and I woke up around 6 am, and sure enough, the 4G signal was gone. So we opted for Plan B, which was ship’s wifi. A simple and straightforward registry process with no requirement for entering folio number. Got our wifi signal quickly, with the following parameters: at 08.50 am, location N65.820 E8.018, ping 736 ms, download 0.46 Mbps, upload 0.17 Mbps. Not stellar, but good enough for our needs. BTW, Serenade is the RCI ship that ventures closest to the North Pole, much closer than the Alaska cruises.

At 11:32 am Captain Stig announced that a couple of minutes earlier we had crossed the Arctic Circle and that an initiation ceremony of crew and voluntary guests would be held a couple of hours later. Ice water was poured onto the victims, who then would swallow a shot of aquavit. Captain Stig was Master of Ceremonies in lieu of King Neptune, who was unable to attend. Some internet data from 2:30 pm: Latitude N67.290, ping 625, download 0.40 Mbps, upload 0.17 Mbps. Incidentally, the location of all my transmissions has been from our balcony cabin on Deck 10, immediately adjacent to the Bridge, just in case that has any relation to internet performance. And all wifi-based transmissions have been undertaken using the slower ”Surf” variant, i.e. not “Surf and Stream”.