Wifi effectiveness on Royal Caribbean? Is it fast enough to work in general? Anyone use Teams Meetings?

[lovn2liv]

Hello,

 

If anyone has had experience working (which it seems we've seen more and more doing this) on the ships and have had to conduct a teams or zoom meeting, what was the outcome?   Were you able to rely on Wifi on a daily basis, or was it a total bust?  Thank you in advance.  Considering working on a cruise as my home office can be anywhere as long as i have wifi.  Would like to try this a couple of times before end of year.   

 

 

[Biker19]

Just now, lovn2liv said:

If anyone has had experience working (which it seems we've seen more and more doing this) on the ships and have had to conduct a teams or zoom meeting, what was the outcome? 

It works most of the time in most locations - better to be on a ship with O3B or Starlink Voom.

[time4u2go]

Depends on which ship, where it is located, and the weather. And probably other things.

[twangster]

I've worked on many, many cruises.  If I have an important meeting that I can control in any way I schedule it for a port day when I'll have cellular options as backup. 

 

All satellite services are subject to rain fade.  During heavy rain the internet will slow or stop altogether.  I've never used Starlink so I'm not clear how it behaves with heavy rain.

 

Murphy's law is very real when working on a ship.  The internet will go out at the worst possible time when you need it the most.  If that would be devastating to your bottom line then working from a cruise ship may not be best for you.  

 

Many people who understand that rain can impact the internet on the ship fail to account for the other way that rain can impact the internet when it's sunny where the ship is.  Your internet data has to come back down to earth somewhere and if there is heavy rain or a bad storm at that place on earth the internet on a ship can suck despite your ship being under open blue skies with no clouds in sight.  It makes no sense standing on a ship when it happens.  "Why does the internet suck right now?".  Until you realize the signals have to come back down to earth somewhere and maybe that somewhere is having a bad day.

 

Then there is bad wifi.  On a recent cruise the wifi signal in my cabin was bad.  If I opened my cabin door I could use the internet.  That meant hours in my cabin with an empty water bottle holding my cabin door cracked open an inch or two.  

 

You'll find there are very few public venues that are quiet.  Many have background music which can be bad if you spend a lot of time on the phone or conference calls.  On port days there can be emergency drills with lots of PA announcements. "This is a drill for the crew.  BRAVO! BRAVO! BRAVO!"  over and over.  If you are on a conference call, WebEx or Zoom call all that background PA stuff seems to never end.  Libraries are sometimes quiet but then you may not be alone as other guests may be reading or playing games.  Participating on a conference call where you have to speak doesn't work well in a library.

 

It really comes down how badly you must be connected during work hours.  Ship internet is far from perfect and it will fail you when you need it most.  When that occurs (and it will) will your company survive without you or will you be fired? 

 

Time zones can wreak havoc on business hours. Hawaii, Transpacific and Transatlantic cruises have lots of sea days so great opportunities to work while on a cruise but the clock keeps on changing.  Now you might be getting up at 2am to work but the good news you have daylight hours free to explore.   Eastbound transatlantic were the most challenging.  Happy hour events starting at 5pm on day one aren't so bad but several days later they are starting in the middle of an eastern time zone work day.   

 

Some itineraries work better for a work week while cruising than others.  Some ships have better internet.  Choose a cruise wisely for maximum business success.

 

If your work loads can be done any time with minimal voice communication or interaction then working while on a ship can work if you are disciplined.   Will family and friends understand that you have to work when they want to play?  Cruising solo has its advantages when working while cruising.  

[mil76]

I worked the business days of a B2B on Navigator recently.  I bought a portable monitor on Amazon so I had a two screen setup similar to my home office.  I worked Eastern time zone hours, so being on Pacific time by mid-afternoon I could be done for the day and go right into cruise mode for the afternoon/evening.  I did speed tests a lot and the speed was abysmal, even on Stream, but I was amazed at how well Zoom worked with that little bandwidth, as I could do audio/video/camera almost all of the time.  For uploading, downloading and streaming anything else the performance was pretty spotty, so I'm really hoping Starlink is going to improve things.  I thought early mornings would be faster since lots of guests are still sleeping, but I think that is a time when the crew sucks up the bandwidth.

 

I worked in the library most mornings so my wife could sleep, but there's no way you can expect it to be quiet at all times.  Most of the time it will be quiet in the morning and there may even be a few others working, but you will inevitably get some wanderers, and by late morning you'll get the card/game players.  As soon as my wife woke up I would go to the stateroom for the rest of my working time.  As twangster mentioned, the announcements are an issue but usually are not very long, but the crew drills on port days were the worst of all since they go on forever.  Most of the time I got away with using the mute button, but it was definitely stressful. 

 

One day I had to do an early presentation on Zoom so I asked if I could use the Conference Center since it wasn't being used.  They let me use it for 2 hours, but it wasn't any better since you still get all the announcements, and there is a door to the crew area in the conference center so there was constant crew traffic.

[njkruzer]

Used Teams while docked in Cozumel in April.  Did pay for surf & stream that day.

[Tee & Chilli]

Used Teams on Mariner and Odyssey. Docked and at sea. Both worked well. 
On Mariner it was buffering once however I logged out then tried again.

[PhillyFan33579]

I have tried to use Teams on sea days and it was terrible. On the other hand it worked well on port days.