High Speed Internet: False Advertising

[need2bespoiled]

The loading of web pages was pretty slow, but not completely unreasonable. Many websites took 3-5 seconds to load. Video streaming was possible but with buffering every few seconds, so practically you could not watch any videos.

 

The main problem was with my trading software which kept giving me connection errors. Same software works with no issues on the same laptop at home.

 

I was able to watch ful TV programs on AMC with one buffering, full movies on HBO or Netflix (in HD) with no bufferng, I streamed video live on Facebook, uploaded large videos to YouTube and large files (over 60meg) to dropbox, posted 100s (litterally) of pictures to Flickr and Cruise Critic and had no issues using remote desktop programs. The connection dropped a few times, but is actually better than the hospital I am currently using the remote internet on a Friday night when it is very quiet here.

 

Your trading program is having a timeout issue that should be fixable in settings. If not, get better software or in the future I'd leave a computer on in a remote location with a high speed connection and remote in with high qualify software like TeamViewer or GotToMeeting or a VPN and use the remote computer to do your functions.

 

Good luck,

Happy sailing,

Jenna

[ak1004]

I have no idea why it worked well for some people and didn't work for others. Maybe it depends on location inside the ship or location of the ship. Maybe it works better in public areas than in cabins. Maybe it works better when the ship is in port. The fact remains. I posted my test results taken on 3 different occasions, all results were under 0.2 MBs.

 

To me, it was a HUGE issue. I depend on reliable and stable internet connection for my online business. I need it for 1-2 hours per day, sometimes less, on random times, and I cannot use it at night when everyone sleeps. To me, it was probably my last Celebrity cruise. I lost clients due to poor connection, and I fully intend to demand compensation from Celebrity Cruises, and if necessary, to take them to court.

 

When you advertise "High Speed Internet", you cannot use excuses like "use it in public areas instead of your cabin" or "use it when demand is less (at night)". It doesn't work that way. Celebrity needs to take responsibility for false advertising.

[DirtyDawg]

I am sorry that you are having this issue and you have lost clients. If you are really thinking about compensation from Celebrity and/or legal action you now have to be thinking about mitigating your loses. You may need to 'abandon ship' at the next port and find a reliable internet connection to conduct your business until you get home. If this means that you cut your vacation time short and fly home today or tommorrow, before the markets open on Monday, so be it.

 

Your lawyer can argue that the lost clients up until now are the fault of the falsely advertised internet speed, but once you have realized this and experienced the consequences for your business you need to take actions to mitigate any future losses or those loses may fall 100% on you.

 

Speak to your lawyer ASAP.

Edited December 10, 2016 by DirtyDawg

[Duanerice1]

It's a bummer but if anyone that has cruised before thought they would have good internet connection then you are dreaming. I would never put my business in jeopardy based on the "claims" of a business.

 

Again, I'm sorry but you need to take some responsibility for not having another option.

[Chunky2219]

On Silhouette in May, the internet was so rubbish I started a threaad like this one. Not just the speed, but the connectivity and the log-in system was dire. Even when moored in port when everyone else was ashore it was rubbish. WiFi signal was so weedy the only place I could be certain of even logging on to burn up my precious minutes was by finding a comfy chair in Cafe El Bachio. If I lost connection the clock kept counting down and I had to go to the IT centre to get my minutes re-instated, this is just poor system design and nothing to do with being at sea.

 

Half the replies agreed with me, the other half told me that even on the same cruise things were wonderful. I guess it all depends on how intensively you want access but it's not like I was trying to Skype, just to download e-mails and access the odd web page. Having a cabin near a sweet spot is also a key to satissfaction.

 

There's a similar thread running over on the Cunard forum right now. Internet there is just great, or at least it was for me last month on QE - easy to connect, reasonable speeds and rock steady even when we were bouncing around on the Bay of Biscay. But even though I think it was fine, there are posters who reckon it's not up to snuff.

 

I suppose the bottom line is that Cuanrd don't make any claims for it being anything special whereas Celebrity are crowing about how great Xcellerate is. They need to live up to the hype.

 

 

 

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[ak1004]

Some people completely missed my point. Which was as the last poster mentioned "They need to live up to the hype." If they advertise how great their internet is, people rely on it. I did not expect it to be similar to what I have at home, but did not expect to have less than 0.2MBs either.

 

I guess some people just have higher standards than others, and they expect the same higher standards from other people. They expect promises to be kept. They expect t get value for their money.

 

And some people just would say "whatever" no matter the level of service they get.

[rwb]

I think that Celebrity, like RCCL, uses the O3B network of relatively low altitude satellites positioned over the equator. It is likely that latitude, storms, and cloud cover might affect connections. And I'm sure it varies by location within the ship itself.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[Chunky2219]

Just spoke to a friend who recently sailed Silverseas in Europe. He ran two speed checks. At sea he got 33Mb down and 12Mb up. When moored in port he got 40Mb down and 14Mb up. In comparison, my measly land line broadband is 2.9Mb down and 0.3Mb up, but it's still faster than I got on Silhouette.

 

When Xcellerate is comparable to what he was getting on Silverseas I reckon they'll have something to shout about.

 

 

 

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[Charles4515]

I think that Celebrity, like RCCL, uses the O3B network of relatively low altitude satellites positioned over the equator. It is likely that latitude, storms, and cloud cover might affect connections. And I'm sure it varies by location within the ship itself.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

 

 

 

It does matter the location of the ship and location within the ship. Locations in Europe are going to get slower speeds than the Caribbean. Last week in the Caribbean the speed was good in my cabin. Very good outside my cabin. Screenshot of test in my cabin.

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ak1004]

The IT people told me that the speed in my cabin was similar to other cabins. I highly doubt it. It was probably just an excuse so they don't have to move me to another cabin or compensate me.

 

From what I hear from people on this (and other) topics, speeds can vary significantly, depending on the location. Which makes sense to me. I actually showed them how slow even simple page loading was. But they kept telling me that there is nothing wrong with my internet. And this is the most annoying part - they just won't take responsibility and admit that the speed in my cabin was terrible.

[Chunky2219]

We need to separate the issues of internet speed and on-board connectivity.

 

A download speed of 2.5-3.5 Mb/s might be just great for the majority of users who just want to swap a few e-mails, open a bit of web news and so on. People shouldn't really expect to be watching streaming movies when there might be 1000 other pax competing for bandwidth and a satellite is 26,000 miles above. Heck, 2.5Mb/sec is better than I sometimes get at home!

 

Looking a little deeper, I really can't get my head around the idea that things would be better in the Carribean than in Europe or anywhere else though. it's not like they don't know where the ships are going to be two years in advance and it's not like there's a shortage of satellites, the sky is full of them. So if some areas are worse than others, that's just a commercial decision made by the cruise line - i.e. not to pay what it costs to provide full coverage for their itineraries.

 

___________________________________

 

 

The other side of the coin though is what actually happens on board between your device and the satallite dish. That's why some pax think it's dreadful, others wonderful. If your cabin is close to a WiFi hotspot and not many nearby cabins are competing then it's all hunky dorey. If you are hanging there half a deck from a Wireless Access Point (WAP) with only one bar of signal strength or worse, a flickering, flakey connection you will quite rightly think it's unacceptable.

 

For the life of me, I don't understand why I couldn't even get a connection in the buffet at breakfast time, unless either the hardware is inadequate or else it is deliberately downgraded to stop people table hogging at busy times.

 

Add to this that the service implementation at login level is downright second-rate and it makes Xcellerate a much over-hyped and under-delivering failure.

 

I'd like to draw a comparison, based on one Celebrity and one Cunard voyage this year. Cunard was no faster than Celebrity. But there were WAPs visible every 20 metres or so on the corridors and we even had a WAP in our cabin. The result was that I could log on anywhere aboard with confidence, deal with the (compartively) slow but entirely adequate speed via satellite and also be confident that even if my device went flat and my connection failed (as happened on Silhouette), I would be logged out by default and my minutes wouldn't continue to count down.

 

It's not rocket science Celebrity, you need to get your act together!!

 

__________________________________________

 

I have one aftethought as well. It's a long time since I earned part of my living as an IT manager of a big, big system and things have moved on a lot since then. I'm now just a slightly talented, vaguely savvy amateur. But I've never come across one of the IT people on board a ship who could make a living doing anything other than flippping burgers on dry land. They have the IT personality (or distinct lack thereof), but don't seem to have any technical depth.

 

I don't mean to tar them all with the same brush, but you're not likely to get the cream of the crop at sea, digging fruitlessly into your two week problem and telling the head honchos on land that things are poor. Even if one of them is any good, their prime focus is going to be on making sure that the professional level connections aboard for captain and management to actually opeate the ship and communicate with H/O are top rate. I'll wager their system is completely separate and absolutely the bees knees.

 

Just a thought.

 

 

 

 

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Edited December 12, 2016 by Chunky2219
typo

[Cruise Raider]

I was on the Equinox just over a week ago and found the internet to be the best it has ever been. It was fast and never disconnected like in the past. Kudos to Celebrity for finally giving us a decent internet experience!

 

I was on the Equinox when they first installed Excelerate. I was extremely happy with it and noticed it was so much better than whatever they used in the past. Like you, I found it was fast (at least as fast as my so called high speed internet at home) and didn't get kicked off every few minutes like before.

I am certainly no high tech guru by any means but am happy with the new internet service that is provided. I wonder if it has gotten slower because so many people may now be getting the unlimited package and it has bogged things down a bit. Also, I never stream or do anything but check my emails and sign up for excursions and such while online on a cruise .... so maybe it is the sites I am logging on to are giving me the impression that it is more than adequate. It is still much better than before as I haven't changed my habits while going online during a cruise and I've noticed a 1000% improvement from before.

[Charles4515]

We need to separate the issues of internet speed and on-board connectivity.

 

A download speed of 2.5-3.5 Mb/s might be just great for the majority of users who just want to swap a few e-mails, open a bit of web news and so on. People shouldn't really expect to be watching streaming movies when there might be 1000 other pax competing for bandwidth and a satellite is 26,000 miles above. Heck, 2.5Mb/sec is better than I sometimes get at home!

 

Looking a little deeper, I really can't get my head around the idea that things would be better in the Carribean than in Europe or anywhere else though. it's not like they don't know where the ships are going to be two years in advance and it's not like there's a shortage of satellites, the sky is full of them. So if some areas are worse than others, that's just a commercial decision made by the cruise line - i.e. not to pay what it costs to provide full coverage for their itineraries.

 

 

It's not rocket science Celebrity, you need to get your act together!!

 

 

 

It is rocket science. All the satellites, every one of them, are in geosynchronous orbit round the equator. So speeds from the satellites will be slower the farther north from the equator and will be better in the Caribbean than in Europe. There is some solution to this issue of satelite position, and that is supplementing satellite coverage with land based microwave antennas beaming to the ships. So whether they do that would be a commercial decision. Also a commercial descision is the mesh network equipment onboard the ship. Having been on Oasis Class on Royal Caribbean with Voom and on S Class with Xcellerate I don't think they installed as good a network on Celebrity as on Oasis Class. Oasis Class was faster and had more bandwidth. I think the extra capacity might be why they charge about half as much on Royal Caribbean than on Celebrity for internet.

 

My Xcellerate service on Reflection last week in the Caribbean was Satisfactory but priced unfairly high in my opionion. $249 for unlimited on a seven day cruise. Voom on Royal Caribbean was about $10 a day and better!!!

 

As far as streaming I was able to stream on Allure of the Seas, Celebrity Summit and Celebrity Reflection. I streamed the final episode of Game of Thrones latest season on Summit. A little stuttering every now anad then but it was okay.

Edited December 12, 2016 by Charles4515

[oneputt18]

Just spoke to a friend who recently sailed Silverseas in Europe. He ran two speed checks. At sea he got 33Mb down and 12Mb up. When moored in port he got 40Mb down and 14Mb up. In comparison, my measly land line broadband is 2.9Mb down and 0.3Mb up, but it's still faster than I got on Silhouette.

 

When Xcellerate is comparable to what he was getting on Silverseas I reckon they'll have something to shout about.

 

 

 

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Impossible numbers, the fastest satellite provider only has a max down of 25 Mb.

[jagoffee]

The IT people told me that the speed in my cabin was similar to other cabins. I highly doubt it. It was probably just an excuse so they don't have to move me to another cabin or compensate me.

 

From what I hear from people on this (and other) topics, speeds can vary significantly, depending on the location. Which makes sense to me. I actually showed them how slow even simple page loading was. But they kept telling me that there is nothing wrong with my internet. And this is the most annoying part - they just won't take responsibility and admit that the speed in my cabin was terrible.

 

I assume you are finding significant difference in signal strength and speed depending on your location? On my last cruise I could not get a signal on the Balcony, but I was fine in the cabin, Solarium, Sky Lounge, and in the pool area.

 

Are you finding some locations that are working for you?

 

If I do not find a strong signal I do not bother even trying.

 

Last cruise I was able to FaceTime in our cabin.

 

I assume you have tried logging out, shutting down, and restarting?

 

Good luck.

Edited December 12, 2016 by jagoffee

[luv2cruisecats]

Hey if I happened to spend a bloody fortune to hop on an outrageously expensive cruise line I too would try to rationalize a justification for my actions. A few things that I might suggest to jealous friends would include a 6 person wait staff wading on a beautiful beach serving drinks and unidentifiable appetizers, 6 servers per diner at meals keeping your silverware in appropriate positions, and of course the old standby extraordinarily fast internet speeds for all 24 passengers.

[Mynki]

If they are going to charge that much for a service, they better provide the service. That's like paying for Murano and getting served chicken nuggets. People would be outraged.

 

That's actually a very fair analogy. The current internet speeds are a joke both in the i lounge and on your own devices.

 

I'm wondering if those describing it as fast are still using dial up modems at home? :D

[Charles4515]

That's actually a very fair analogy. The current internet speeds are a joke both in the i lounge and on your own devices.

 

 

 

I'm wondering if those describing it as fast are still using dial up modems at home? :D

 

 

 

I was getting 3 Mbps and 4 Mbps on Reflection in my cabin last week. It was faster in public areas, sorry I didn't speed test it in public areas, but I could stream. That is a lot faster than dial up modems and it is substantially faster than the speeds I got in 2015 and earlier before Xcellerate. At home I get 57 Mbps which of course is faster, but it is not satellite.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Edited December 12, 2016 by Charles4515

[need2bespoiled]

I have a 40 meg connection at home, and found the ships internet more than adequate. It compared to my recent cruise on Disney, and better than Celestyal and way better than it used to be in Celebrity. I streamed many movies, TV, Netflix and more. Sure, it's not a 49 meg connection but at home we don't share our connection in the same way though some connectoins are technically shared to some extent.

 

Oh, and for location issues, remembered this is a metal ship, all wireless signals will do some weird things when they hit metal.

 

As far as I am concerned, Celebrity has fast internet for cruise ships, speed tests don't mean so much without knowing the locations of the servers on either end as that can impact speeds greatly, just as who else is using the wireless AP you're using and what they're doing.

 

It could be something as simple s the port / gateway the original poster is using isn't prioritized in the same way other ports are and it times out but solving the issue won't come easy for someone who threatens to sue the provider. You know what they say about honey...

 

Happy sailing,

Jenna

[QE2_Fan]

We were recently on Solstice and found the internet performance vastly superior from pre xcellerate days. was able to stream and download content without any major issue. Was it perfect - no. But then I'm not expecting it to be, it's not like I have a contract with my local ISP on board with guaranteed speeds.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[fshagan]

Impossible numbers, the fastest satellite provider only has a max down of 25 Mb.

 

I'm not confident that the speed tests are that accurate anyway. I don't know what effect the CDN and caching they are using does to the results, so I wouldn't be surprised to see the second person accessing speedtest.net to get a much better result.

 

I'll have to experience fast Internet at sea on a promo to ever purchase it again. I'm so glad I can just use a wifi connection in port and forget about being connected when at sea.

[ChucktownSteve]

We are now cruising on Celebrity Equinox, and the Internet connection is ridiculously slow.

 

Here is a speed test taken on two different occasions:

 

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/5857260650

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/5839601918

 

I am currently on the Equinox. Here is my speed test at 5:30 Atlantic time.

 

 

I have on several occasions gotten the following screen.

 

 

It happens during the day or middle of the night.

 

I agree with QE2 fan that the speed is far superior to the pre-xcellerate days. However I find the worst time to try to use the internet is in the afternoon after people returned from shore and before dinner.

Edited December 13, 2016 by ChucktownSteve

[Chunky2219]

Impossible numbers, the fastest satellite provider only has a max down of 25 Mb.

Well the guy works for BT, which I assume means he knows what he was doing. So he must be a lair then. Unless .......... the ship simply combines multiple streams? Or maybe the number that you Googled is the fastest speed available to domestic customers and if you have a big ship with a dish the size of a billionaire's dining table you can do a bit better.

 

I'm betting on both being the case.

 

It is rocket science. All the satellites, every one of them, are in geosynchronous orbit round the equator. So speeds from the satellites will be slower the farther north from the equator and will be better in the Caribbean than in Europe.

 

We really ought to tell the poor folks in Australia and New Zealand that the satallite TV and comms they are getting is all in their imagination. I guess the people at the Antarctic research stations still have to rely on bouncing short wave radio off the troposphere when the atmosphere is clement for a few hours a week as well.

 

The realitity of course is just as I alluded to. It matters little where you are on the earth providing there is a line of sight to a satellite and more importantly that they point the satellite in the right direction and deploy enough transmitted power and bandwidth. All three of the major satellite telecoms providers offer voice and fast data packages to New Zealand, which is rather further from the equator than is the Med. They all offer comms to ships at sea almost anywhere between the two poles.

 

Do you imagine that the ship is out of data contact for management purposes every time they visit Iceland? No, of course not and they're not relying on carrier pigeons either. So any variation in provision for passengers between near-equatorial and further north/south is an entirely commercial decision taken by the line(s). None of the advertising has the caveat "Might be rubbish in most places the ship goes".

 

We can however agree that the on-baord implementation is not good enough, which is they point I was actually trying to make.

 

 

 

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[Charles4515]

 

We really ought to tell the poor folks in Australia and New Zealand that the satallite TV and comms they are getting is all in their imagination. I guess the people at the Antarctic research stations still have to rely on bouncing short wave radio off the troposphere when the atmosphere is clement for a few hours a week as well.

 

The realitity of course is just as I alluded to. It matters little where you are on the earth providing there is a line of sight to a satellite and more importantly that they point the satellite in the right direction and deploy enough transmitted power and bandwidth. All three of the major satellite telecoms providers offer voice and fast data packages to New Zealand, which is rather further from the equator than is the Med. They all offer comms to ships at sea almost anywhere between the two poles.

 

 

We can however agree that the on-baord implementation is not good enough, which is they point I was actually trying to make.

 

 

 

Did you ever take a geography course? The earth is not flat. It is a sphere. Take a look at the latitudes of Australia and New Zealand.

 

Your geographic argument is nonesense. New Zealand is not rather further from the Equator than the Med. Rome for example is as at 41 degrees North. Wellington New Zealand is at 41 degrees South. Distances from the Equator for Australia and New Zealand are similar to distances in the United States from the Equator. A lot of Australia is closer to the Equator than the Caribbean.

 

I think the onboard implementation has reached good. That does not mean it can't be better but it has reached good. I was able to stream Game of Thrones, do Facetime calls and upload photos to Facebook. That is good enough for most people.

Edited December 13, 2016 by Charles4515

[Chunky2219]

Did you ever take a geography course? The earth is not flat. It is a sphere. Take a look at the latitudes of Australia and New Zealand. Your geographic argument is nonesense. New Zealand is not rather further from the Equator than the Med. .....................

 

I think the onboard implementation has reached good. That does not mean it can't be better but it has reached good. I was able to stream Game of Thrones, do Facetime calls and upload photos to Facebook. That is good enough for most people.

I confess that I only took geography to GCE level and progressed no further with what in my time was just an exercise in colouring in maps. However, I have had need to check up on satellite coverage before now, hence my previous response. To put it in perspective, the tip of New Zealand (where I have been aboard Solstice) is at 46 degrees latitude which beats anywhere in the Med for its non-equatorialness (if that word exists). I can also confirm that I've had a wonderful internet connection (on another line) while on the St Lawrence river which I now find goes to 49 degrees north at it's mouth on it's way up into Quebec.

 

Maybe for clarity and emphasis I should have quoted Tiera del Fuego at 55 degrees - if you look on the Immarsat website or any of the others you you see that they provide a service at sea at that latitude. I'm yet to hear a cogent argument for why a service is available so far south (or north) and yet it is flakey on a Celebrity ship in a place where they put a couple of vessels all summer.

 

Beside that, I don't give two hoots about how you found on-board implementation. The fact is that plenty of people do not share your experience and yet Celebrity advertises how great it is. The fact that you have confused available bandwidth to watch Game of Thrones with the actual on-board implementation, patchy WiFi connectivity and clunky system management means that one us is indeed talking nonsense. It isn't me though.

 

p.s The earth isn't a sphere. It's an oblate spheroid. I picked that knowledge up while doing the map colouring gig.

 

 

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