It also has to do with what band is available to passengers. They have K band, C band, etc, but if I remember correctly, the top is kept for ship needs, and then what is left is made available to passengers. The ship has to keep in touch with the computers at "home" so that you get your OBC, the casino works correctly, the future cruise staff can make reservations in real time, credit cards authorized, vendors updated with numbers, etc.
In the Med last month, I often got better email access by turning on my T-Mobile phone as soon as we seemed to be in range rather than depending on ship Internet, the ship Internet was often just pitiful.
Bandwidth is important but the number of simultaneous users accessing the bandwidth available is even more the issue According to the article, cruise lines typically buy 4 megabits (the article said 4 megabytes but speed is usually quoted in bits per second not bytes (a byte is 8 bits)) and if there is only one user then everything will feel fine(its what I have at home) but if there are 100 simultaneous users then the bandwidth is shared among them and so they will each receive (rough numbers) about 40 kilobits per second which is high dial up speed. And now if there are 200 simultaneous users we are down to 20 kilobits/sec and that is very slow indeed.
Internet Speed - Any Tech Geeks able to explain why so slow?
in Celebrity Cruises
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Bandwidth is important but the number of simultaneous users accessing the bandwidth available is even more the issue According to the article, cruise lines typically buy 4 megabits (the article said 4 megabytes but speed is usually quoted in bits per second not bytes (a byte is 8 bits)) and if there is only one user then everything will feel fine(its what I have at home) but if there are 100 simultaneous users then the bandwidth is shared among them and so they will each receive (rough numbers) about 40 kilobits per second which is high dial up speed. And now if there are 200 simultaneous users we are down to 20 kilobits/sec and that is very slow indeed.