Eclipse Internet Service on Australia, New Zealand, South Pacific, Hawaii Cruises

[Tenderpaw]

We are hopefully taking an 18 night transpacific cruise on the Eclipse in March of 22.  I was considering doing some work on sea days during the cruise.  I'm aware of the time difference, but that aside, can anyone tell me their experience with the internet?  Is it available on the ship in that part of the world?  Is there enough bandwidth for Teams meetings?

 

Thanks,

 

Dave

[cruisestitch]

Once the AllInclusive takes effect, so that passengers who might not have purchased internet will now have it included, nobody can tell what the number of people sharing the bandwidth will be.  

[TeeRick]

We were on Eclipse January 2020 for close to 2 weeks traveling around South America.  The internet was mostly very good.  I think an occasional slow period due to satellite signals.  Overall we used it for streaming, WiFi Calling, texting.  Our cabin (aft corner) had a good signal.  Cabin signal on parts of the ship might be better than others.  Public areas were fine.

[mahdnc]

16 hours ago, Tenderpaw said:

We are hopefully taking an 18 night transpacific cruise on the Eclipse in March of 22.  I was considering doing some work on sea days during the cruise.  I'm aware of the time difference, but that aside, can anyone tell me their experience with the internet?  Is it available on the ship in that part of the world?  Is there enough bandwidth for Teams meetings?

 

Thanks,

 

Dave

 

 

 

We sailed aboard Solstice out of Sydney to the Great Barrier Reef (Jan 2018) and to New Zealand (Dec 2019).  Our family used the ship's Wi-Fi fairly heavily.  Wi-Fi speed was slow during high peak usage time (e.g. sea days and evenings) but we were able to do FaceTime.

 

 

For what it's worth, here is a screenshot of some ship board Wi-Fi speed readings that I measured with the Speedtest app.  The Jan 2020 readings were from Solstice during our New Zealand cruise while the Jan 2019 readings were from Reflection during our Caribbean cruise.  For both sailings most of the readings were taken from our stateroom located at the very front of the ship.

 

Edited February 9, 2021 by mahdnc

[mahdnc]

I forgot to add:

 

The All-Inclusive package has the Surf (slower speed) Wi-Fi although you can pay to upgrade to the Stream (faster speed) Wi-Fi.  I believe that the Streaming Wi-Fi package should be sufficient to support a Teams video/audio feed while the Surf package should be able to handle audio only.

[Arizona Wildcat]

57 minutes ago, mahdnc said:

I forgot to add:

 

The All-Inclusive package has the Surf (slower speed) Wi-Fi although you can pay to upgrade to the Stream (faster speed) Wi-Fi.  I believe that the Streaming Wi-Fi package should be sufficient to support a Teams video/audio feed while the Surf package should be able to handle audio only.

A definate maybe.  As already said dividing the bandwidth into ever small parts and everyone having "free" internet means slower than before.

A team meeting would be most likely to work after 10-11pm and before 6am ship's time.  Crew are heavy morning and midday users. Passengers mostly from 9am to about 10pm.

[Yoshikitty]

We have been on that itinerary twice (on Solstice) and never had problems with the internet.

While it was pre-zoom age, using the video function on Apple Facetime worked well with the „small“ package

 

Edited February 9, 2021 by Yoshikitty

[Basketball wife]

We were on the two week SA Eclipse cruise in March (the last cruise🥺)that was extended another two weeks because of the pandemic. We had purchased the unlimited surf and stream package. During the “scheduled” first  two weeks of the cruise, we had no problems using video chats and watching Netflix. However, when the cruise was unexpectedly extended, they opened up the wifi to everyone; even though we supposedly still had the streaming capability attached to our account, it was horrible, always disconnecting — if you could connect at all— and video chatting was a crapshoot.  So, unless they upgrade their system, I am not sure how good it will be now with the AI and everyone on the ship using it.
 

Also, as an FYI, they gave free drinks to everyone during the extension. We had purchased the premium drink package and were told that it would be honoured everywhere, but there was never anything from that package available, anywhere 🤷🏻‍♀️and Cafe Baccio was always a zoo (I wonder what it will now be like).It was good policy for Celebrity to offer the wifi and drinks, it was an upgrade for most people but we joked that we got downgraded. So, again, it will be interesting to see the differentiation because of the All Included once they get sailing again. My husband and I wonder if they crunched the numbers and used these last pre-pandemic stranded/extended cruises as a justification for moving to AI...