Internet: Unlimited, but Unusable. Is this unique?

[sirclean]

11 27 2022    Just off the Discovery Princess' Thanksgiving Week Cruise.  We had the plus package, so we had internet service  (1 device per person - at a time, anyway).

The Discovery is a large ship and with Thanksgiving they were at or above capacity (with lots of children and many cabins above double occupancy).  I found that the internet, while 'unlimited' was so slow as to be unusable.  Only once in the entire cruise (when a popular show was on in the Princess Theater, and dinner service was still on) did the speed seem reasonable.  It would take several minutes to even get email to load.  If I tried to delete more than 5 ads/spam emails at one time, it was bog down again.   (I called twice to see if there were better locations, or if it was this slow everywhere, and was told that it is the same everywhere).

At the Elite/Platinum reception the Captain's Circle Host indicated that we were near capacity and near a Princess Record number of passengers.  So it is possible, perhaps that the system was simply taxed with lots of youngins playing lots of bandwidth heavy games.  It was so slow that I was unable to get any of the tasks done that I had intended to do as I can never entirely get away. 

For comparison, in the olden days when Elite level passengers got limited 'free minutes' I could get on, but was limited.  My preferred itineraries are in Alaska, so I can use my phone as a hotspot at most of the ports, so this hasnt been an issue before.  But this is our first Princess, Post-COVID cruise, so I dont have any recent experience.

 

Anyway, what is YOUR experience?  Is internet, generally, unlimited AND accessible?  Is this an issue with Discovery, or just a reflection of running at the limits of capacity?

[KarmaCruisers]

Since the pandemic; it’s pure FOMO; so literally every single person on the ships are buying the internet package.

We’re just off the Sky (thanksgiving cruise also) and the average speed was 128Kbps (year 2000 ISDN speed lol)

What you’re not factoring in ALSO, is employees using the same pipe…I actually stayed up all night one night..found the highest speed of the trip around 330am shiptime..5Mbps (DSL from year 2003, haha)

This isn’t specific to Princess either..it’s all ships since the debacle of the Diamond Princess (people fear being “trapped” on a cruise ship for extended time without internet)

Only Elon can help us all, if the greedy cruise lines will let him help (StarLink)

 

EDIT: to add, if you needed to use the internet package for ACTUAL work (Aka: connecting to a VPN from your laptop) you’d LITERALLY be “dead in the water”.

Edited November 28, 2022 by KarmaCruisers

[VibeGuy]

No.  It’s because they’re selling the 2010 internet with 2022 packages.  
 

Princess has a much-ballyhooed partnership for internet with a company called SES.   SES operates three sets of satellites that can be routinely used for ship internet - HEO, MEO and a new MEO + constellation. 
 

For a while, pre-Recent Unpleasantries, Princess was using the MEO constellation and it was remarkably good - “the best WiFi at sea” was a reasonable way to describe it. 
 

For whatever reason, since the restart, even when operating between 45°N and 45°S, where the “old” MEO network works best, Princess has been using the HEO satellites.   I’ve seen ping data from this week on Ruby, Diamond and Discovery that all show the use of the legacy HEO network.   There’s nothing wrong with HEO, except that they move less data (lower bandwidth) and they’re 16,000 miles higher in the sky (adds a quarter second to each packet - it’s the speed of light and each packet has to go up and down to get to the earth station. 
 

Their provider is supposed to be turning up their New Better MEO network by the end of the year.  I’m not holding my breath.  
 

Princess is absolutely not being transparent about this, but physics doesn’t lie.  If the ping time is over 250ms, they’re using the older, slower network.  

[Mittens101]

We were on sky week before thanksgiving and had the package.  Do not waste your money! It was slow as crap and you couldn’t hardly use it. 

[hpeabody]

This sounds like my Discovery experience this summer too and that cruise was probably at just about normal capacity.  Similar on Enchanted in October, Really bad on Sapphire this month.  It was so bad, it messed with my laptop to where it was giving me that dreaded blue screen WINDOWS HAS A PROBLEM and would shut down and would generally freeze up just trying to access a website or move to next page on a website. The company that Princess has outsourced to has found ways to block drop box, my email (from sending or replying) and they give Facebook the lowest priority, it was ridiculous.  Nothing close to the internet we know at home.  The worst thing IMO is Princess does not seem to care or be concerned about it.  This was my experience and my opinion, YMMV

[Rick&Jeannie]

22 minutes ago, VibeGuy said:

No.  It’s because they’re selling the 2010 internet with 2022 packages.  
 

Princess has a much-ballyhooed partnership for internet with a company called SES.   SES operates three sets of satellites that can be routinely used for ship internet - HEO, MEO and a new MEO + constellation. 
 

For a while, pre-Recent Unpleasantries, Princess was using the MEO constellation and it was remarkably good - “the best WiFi at sea” was a reasonable way to describe it. 
 

For whatever reason, since the restart, even when operating between 45°N and 45°S, where the “old” MEO network works best, Princess has been using the HEO satellites.   I’ve seen ping data from this week on Ruby, Diamond and Discovery that all show the use of the legacy HEO network.   There’s nothing wrong with HEO, except that they move less data (lower bandwidth) and they’re 16,000 miles higher in the sky (adds a quarter second to each packet - it’s the speed of light and each packet has to go up and down to get to the earth station. 
 

Their provider is supposed to be turning up their New Better MEO network by the end of the year.  I’m not holding my breath.  
 

Princess is absolutely not being transparent about this, but physics doesn’t lie.  If the ping time is over 250ms, they’re using the older, slower network.  

I'm *really* curious as to the source of most of your info points.  (Don't get me wrong...I'm NOT disputing ANYTHING you've said!)  I've been saying for quite some time now that the Princess business relationship with SES has changed...exactly how I wasn't sure.  You appear to have uncovered a lot more info since I last looked into it.  Can you share your info source, please?

[kiwimum]

Remember all ships are now Medallion and track all guests at all times.    This alone has to take up a lot of bandwidth.   In our experience internet has become progressively worse since the return to business last year.    More passengers, more tracking and ship company bandwidth being utilized.  Just my opinion.

[VibeGuy]

Use fast.com onboard - there’s a More Info button when the first test completes.   

the “unloaded latency” number onboard  is primarily driven by the crass physics of the speed of light in a vacuum. 
 

 

When they are using the O3B network, this number is around 100.  When they are using legacy HEO assets it cannot be below 225. 
 

SES’s delays in turning up O3B mPower (new MEO) have been disclosed in various filings related to their stock.   They’re blaming the lack of MEO performance in Europe on the number of ships deployed in a comparatively dense region and promise it will all get better when the new thing comes online, but the Mexican Riviera has a lot fewer ships competing for bandwidth. 
 

Exec from SES saying “let them eat HEO” - https://www.seatrade-cruise.com/information-technology/ses-meet-soaring-cruise-bandwidth-demand-o3b-mpower

 

I don’t buy the ”too many passengers” argument.  Ruby was using the HEO assets this time last year when 75% of cabins went out empty. 

[KarmaCruisers]

15 minutes ago, VibeGuy said:

Exec from SES saying “let them eat HEO” - https://www.seatrade-cruise.com/information-technology/ses-meet-soaring-cruise-bandwidth-demand-o3b-mpower

 

I don’t buy the ”too many passengers” argument.  Ruby was using the HEO assets this time last year when 75% of cabins went out empty. 

Thanks for this info..this kind of cemented what I thought was happening..

1. double the demand for usage

2. cruise lines asking for crew traffic to be prioritized over guest traffic

3. QoS to provide priority to VoIP traffic.

 

Hopefully they get mPower setup ASAP!

Edited November 28, 2022 by KarmaCruisers

[KarmaCruisers]

Also; this was my average speed this week on the Sky

[KLM3164]

We just got off the Royal Princess today and the internet was unusable. We had pre-paid for it and requested a full refund on day 2. Our request was granted….no questions asked. Ship was at 109% capacity with 800 kids onboard so this may have contributed to the lack of internet. Our next cruise on the Royal is in January and we’ve got the + package so I guess we’ll be stuck with the internet this time. I’m wondering if they do any partial refunds when you’ve purchased a package. Anyone have any experience getting internet refunded as part or Plus or Premier?

[VibeGuy]

Speed maybe a demand problem, but the lag is brutal using HEO - and when you have typical apps loading a bunch of useless telemetry and tracking cruft, each of which either has to complete or timeout for the app to move forward, it’s a nightmare.   Moving to the MEO assets makes crappy speed a *lot* more tolerable because for typical web and mail usage, the content is small, but the connection-related delays are wildly multiplied. 

[VibeGuy]

Ruby, the other night:  note that the upload isn’t awful.  But the latency is miserable.  

 

[VibeGuy]

Diamond on (Tuesday?)

 

here the upload is also atrocious, and this could well be heavy usage, except the ship is sailing 60% full. 

[NownZen]

38 minutes ago, VibeGuy said:

Diamond on (Tuesday?)

 

here the upload is also atrocious, and this could well be heavy usage, except the ship is sailing 60% full. 

Thank you for posting this useful information. I think this is part of Princess's cunning plan to wean us off of depending on the internet.  It will bother me on our upcoming cruise but Mrs Zen seems unaffected.

On an Iceland cruise we were without internet for several days. Someone said they would refund the internet cost but nothing showed up so I went to the PSD and asked them to refund the money. They did so with no hesitation even though we had the Plus package. We got back $9.95/day per person. DW never noticed the problem. However, there is a reason she is the Zen part of the pair.

[NownZen]

1 hour ago, kiwimum said:

Remember all ships are now Medallion and track all guests at all times.    This alone has to take up a lot of bandwidth.   In our experience internet has become progressively worse since the return to business last year.    More passengers, more tracking and ship company bandwidth being utilized.  Just my opinion.

Tracking is done on the internal computer system network and does not use the external internet. So there is no effect there.

[KarmaCruisers]

55 minutes ago, VibeGuy said:

Ruby, the other night:  note that the upload isn’t awful.  But the latency is miserable.  

 

That’s weird AF that the upload is literally 15x faster than the download. (It SHOULD be the other way around?)

all these latency numbers are VIOLENT haha. When you get into triple digits…it’s bad.

[VibeGuy]

Latency like that is a hate crime at this point.  

[VibeGuy]

I’ll cut them some slack on Iceland, Greenland and the northernmost part of Alaska sailings because O3b MEO starts to degrade at 45°N (roughly the OR/WA border) and disappears almost entirely by 60°N (Skagway), and even HEO is going to be getting awfully close to the horizon at that point.  Physics again. 
 

but what explains the predicted three-day outage in the middle of Emerald’s transatlantic?   SES has asset in that longitude, and if they don’t have capacity they claim they can route traffic to other operators by over the air config of the onboard systems.  
 

The cynic in me says that Princess went out on a limb and deployed MedallionNet at a loss-leader $10/day knowing the actual per-delivered-GB cost of the backhaul was much, much higher, but the planned availability of mPower would drop the costs substantially.   The new constellation is delayed (launches in to 2023, up to six months after launch for positioning, provisioning and testing) and SES is all “hey, wanna buy some cheap high-latency GEO/HEO capacity to sate the masses?” and here we are.   Princess is not in the same financial position to absorb those losses as they were pre-shutdown. 
 

This is, of course, speculation, informed by two and a half months onboard since the restart and asking friends on various sailings to take a speed test at sea.  It’s definitely not as good as it was and it’s not just overuse by passengers. 
 

 

Edited November 28, 2022 by VibeGuy

[NownZen]

7 minutes ago, VibeGuy said:

I’ll cut them some slack on Iceland, Greenland and the northernmost part of Alaska sailings because O3b MEO starts to degrade at 45°N (roughly the OR/WA border) and disappears almost entirely by 60°N (Skagway), and even HEO is going to be getting awfully close to the horizon at that point.  Physics again. 
 

but what explains the predicted three-day outage in the middle of Emerald’s transatlantic?   SES has asset in that longitude, and if they don’t have capacity they claim they can route traffic to other operators by over the air config of the onboard systems.  
 

The cynic in me says that Princess went out on a limb and deployed MedallionNet at a loss-leader $10/day knowing the actual per-delivered-GB cost of the backhaul was much, much higher, but the planned availability of mPower would drop the costs substantially.   The new constellation is delayed (launches in to 2023, up to six months after launch for positioning, provisioning and testing) and SES is all “hey, wanna buy some cheap high-latency GEO/HEO capacity to sate the masses?” and here we are.   Princess is not in the same financial position to absorb those losses as they were pre-shutdown. 
 

This is, of course, speculation, informed by two and a half months onboard since the restart and asking friends on various sailings to take a speed test at sea.  It’s definitely not as good as it was and it’s not just overuse by passengers. 
 

 

You are right. I think Princess did not do the numbers for the internet use in a rational way. They did the same with hiring kids who had never been on a ship (or programmed before for that matter) to do the app. I have written apps and I was appalled by the amateur hour efforts made. They spent a lot of time on silly things like showing the ship lights coming on as you left port while ignoring functional problems. It is hard to get an app approval level of under 1.5.  The latest update seems to have removed the ability to enter covid test results. True that there are only a few cruises requiring that but we are coming up on one. In the HItchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products were described as "you were blinded by the uselessness of their products by your sheer joy in getting them to do anything at all. That is, their fundamental design flaws were obscured by their superficial design flaws". We saw a lecture by Douglas Adams a few weeks before he died, unfortunately titled "Last Chance to See" about some conservation efforts.

 

[KarmaCruisers]

LOL; as a software engineer I 10000% agree with the app..like how in the HELL did it pass a 3rd party QA lab!?

oddly, carnivals app SMASHES the hell out of “medallionClass”

[VibeGuy]

Anyone who has ever done a project like the OM app with massive executive visibility and 100% outsourced development could see it all coming.  The emphasis on sizzle versus substance.  The “blame the user/device fleet” when the problems were in the back end.   Relatively common things like B2B and S2S sailings causing crashes and being dismissed as corner cases.   Those of us who have been tasked with rescuing smoking craters of shareholder money also know that bombing a project like this is no impediment to executive promotion. 
 

99% of the issues I’ve had with the OM app have been pre-cruise and most of them have had to do with OM choking on legacy data from the OS/400-based POLAR or vice versa.  The issues I’ve had onboard have turned out to largely be dead medallion batteries after multiple consecutive segments.  But all the effort spent to change the ship graphic by port and time of day?   The endless dead ends for features that weren’t ready at launch?  The performance on top-spec iPhone Pro Max?  It’s the worst combo of modern “minimal viable product” thinking (which is for pre-funding startups, not companies with paying users) meeting meddling from the top concerned with style over substance.
 

while returning a rental car near port Everglades, I missed a turn and ended up at the Medallion Experience Center.  I sorta wanted to just yeet the car right through the front door.  I joked that despite having two medallions in the car and  a contract with my name on it in the glove box, it would take them days to figure out the car didn’t belong there and they’d never figure out who did it. 
 

[KarmaCruisers]

The saddest part of that statement is a billion dollar company OUTSOURCES the creation of a MAIN STAPLE of their product…at least if it were built in-house; it may have been built by someone who ACTUALLY had been on a princess cruise. (Or even a cruise, for that matter)

[antsp]

4 hours ago, kiwimum said:

Remember all ships are now Medallion and track all guests at all times.    This alone has to take up a lot of bandwidth.   In our experience internet has become progressively worse since the return to business last year.    More passengers, more tracking and ship company bandwidth being utilized.  Just my opinion.

The medallion has nothing to do with the Internet. Good job it's your opinion as its wrong. 

Edited November 28, 2022 by antsp

[VibeGuy]

The partners and principals at A**enture are brilliant at selling the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel and delivering fingerpaint from intellectually challenged toddlers.