Xcelerate Internet

Internet Access

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Internet Access

 

 

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Booked the Internet package for the duration of our cruise! Worth every penny to stay in touch and very good speeds with no connection issues! Only downside is you can only connect one device at a time, not really a problem for us at my husband is not really a technology freak like me! I have noticed whilst onboard that there is an offer to connect a second device(only applies to the same stateroom) for half price. It does seem a lot of money I guess but it works out far more to connect by the hour or day.

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You're very lucky. Our service has been very poor. So much so that we had an officer visit a cabin. It turns out certain cabins are considerably better than others. I had to move to a public area on several occasions where it was fine. After three or four attempts at explaining to the officer that it wasn't my laptop, or my first and even second choice of browser to blame he finally admitted that some cabins will have very poor / unusable speed. :/

You're very lucky. Our service has been very poor. So much so that we had an officer visit a cabin. It turns out certain cabins are considerably better than others. I had to move to a public area on several occasions where it was fine. After three or four attempts at explaining to the officer that it wasn't my laptop, or my first and even second choice of browser to blame he finally admitted that some cabins will have very poor / unusable speed. :/

You are correct from my experience. The location in the cabin has also been a factor for me.

You are correct from my experience. The location in the cabin has also been a factor for me.

Maybe we have just been extremely lucky then. We are on the 11th deck toward the aft...wonder how that compares to your positioning?

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You're very lucky. Our service has been very poor. So much so that we had an officer visit a cabin. It turns out certain cabins are considerably better than others. I had to move to a public area on several occasions where it was fine. After three or four attempts at explaining to the officer that it wasn't my laptop, or my first and even second choice of browser to blame he finally admitted that some cabins will have very poor / unusable speed. :/

Maybe we have been extremely lucky then...we are situated on the 11th deck toward the aft. Wonder how that compares to your location on the ship?

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We had Internet Service on our last two Silhouette cruises and the speed was fine both trips (19 days total). Both trips we were in SS2 cabins all the way aft. No problems in the room (even outside) at all except during very busy periods (all onboard, last day, etc.). The speed was fine for the most part, but only doing standard Internet stuff; no big file up/down loads). The only place that was weak was in the Persian Gardens and I was only using the phone to read a book, but noticed very low WiFi signal levels. I did not carry my phone everywhere, but my wife did (Facebook addict) and she never had many issues.

The WiFi antennas are scattered all over the ship and are easily spotted. I can understand how certain locations, especially in cabins and other RF shielded areas, may have problems. Being a retired RF engineer, I am surprised that it works as well as it does for being a retrofit instead of being included in the design and building of the ship.

Wonder then if the aft end is one of the better locations onboard? I certainly very pleased with my own personal experience with Xcelerate...may it long continue!

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We had Internet Service on our last two Silhouette cruises and the speed was fine both trips (19 days total). Both trips we were in SS2 cabins all the way aft. No problems in the room (even outside) at all except during very busy periods (all onboard, last day, etc.). The speed was fine for the most part, but only doing standard Internet stuff; no big file up/down loads). The only place that was weak was in the Persian Gardens and I was only using the phone to read a book, but noticed very low WiFi signal levels. I did not carry my phone everywhere, but my wife did (Facebook addict) and she never had many issues.

 

The WiFi antennas are scattered all over the ship and are easily spotted. I can understand how certain locations, especially in cabins and other RF shielded areas, may have problems. Being a retired RF engineer, I am surprised that it works as well as it does for being a retrofit instead of being included in the design and building of the ship.

Its all in the angles. Signals don't travel around corners, at least yet. Rooms on the bends or where hallways are angled will have a loss. I used to travel with laptops that

required 15mb transmissions. Normally impossible, I discovered a trick. It also helps with clogged sessions. One transatlantic sailing on the Sil had a total failure of internet and phones as the hardware crashed with no backup.

But compared to the early days, the current state is a small miracle.

We are currently on the Summit deck 7 midship. I have been pleasantly surprised how fast the internet has been!

we are currently on Equinox deck 10 in a Celebrity Suite right off the library. It is an angled cabin, but we have absolutely no issues with internet. It is fast and reliable. Very pleased with the service

It also depends on where you are on the globe. I believe that both RCCL and Celebrity use the O3b satellite network when at sea. That network relies on a dozen or so satellites in relatively low orbits fairly close to the equator. Latency times would typically be fairly long (near 100ms and up depending on distance from the nearest satellite) but that may not be noticeable in most internet activities. Those satellites make for a significant improvement over past systems, but they do not cover the entire globe. Coverage is impacted when the ship is far north or far south -- for instance, enroute to Iceland, offshore of Canada or Alaska, southern South America, or other locations far from the equator.

I am pretty sure that when the ships are docked, or within around 50 miles of land, they use a different, land-based network. Alaska cruises may used land-based networks exclusively,

Whatever, Celebrity and RCCL have provided us with a internet experience that is vastly better than what we experienced just a few years ago.

We had a forward cabin aboard Solstice (2018 Great Barrier Reef sailing) and had a good wifi signal. However the speed was best in the early morning and was very slow when presumably everybody else was online later in the day. In order to send out any photos by email or text, you pretty much had to do it first thing in the morning otherwise the text or email would fail to send.

Our experience aboard Infinity (2017 South America cruise) was different. We had an FV cabin located at the very rear corner of the ship. There was a wireless repeater mounted in the hallway close to our cabin, but we could not get a good signal in our cabin when our (metal) doors were closed. Fortunately you could not look directly into our cabin from the hallway when the doors were open. So our family would like to joke about it by requesting that someone turn the internet "on" which was a request to open the door and place the door stop underneath it to keep it open!

Our experience with wifi speed was much better on Infinity than it was aboard Solstice. I was able to FaceTime my parents on Christmas Day from the Grand Foyer.