Voom On serenade of the seas norwegian fjords Cruise

[goofy810]

So normaly I could careless about internet on the ship I like to get disconnected, however this time the kids will be at home with the sitter so just as I did last May on the Anthem I got the surf and stream voom prepaid. It worked great I had wifi everywhere on the ship and facetime and iMessage worked great, my daughter send voice mail and called both at night and in the AM. Now we are booked on the above cruise May 13th out of Copenhagen and I did some digging per the provider O3b it looks like we will have limited service as we are above 45deg, has anyone used voom on the same cruise and ship or even just the same cruise?

I am trying to see if I should sign up for a cell at sea plan or not.

 

Thanks folks.

 

https://www.o3bnetworks.com/technology/service-coverage/

[Clarea]

Serenade does not have O3b internet, she has the old geosync service. Still, I would expect it to be at least as reliable, and faster than any cellular at sea data service.

[Biker19]

Also factor in the 6 hr time difference into your usage pattern (which you didn't have on Anthem).

[goofy810]

Serenade does not have O3b internet, she has the old geosync service. Still, I would expect it to be at least as reliable, and faster than any cellular at sea data service.

 

where did you read that ? i was told all of Royal ships now have O3b service, and folks on her in the Carribbean have said they can facetime and stream so I would think it must be O3b for that ?

[Clarea]

where did you read that ? i was told all of Royal ships now have O3b service, and folks on her in the Carribbean have said they can facetime and stream so I would think it must be O3b for that ?

All Royal ships now have VOOM, which Royal sort of led people to believe was O3b. However, the only ships with O3b are Quantum class, Oasis class, Freedom, and Majesty. Not sure about Empress. I believe Royal did increase the bandwidth for the Harris Caprock geosync service, but it's still nothing like O3b, and the ping times are much higher than the 200ms or so for O3b.

[billsgal]

We did the same cruise on the same ship last year. Do not expect the internet service to be anywhere near what you experienced on the newer ships. We had many blocks of time where we had no service (especially the day cruising in the fjords), and when we had service it was much slower and much less reliable than our cruises on the Oasis and Quantum classes of ships.

 

This is an amazing ship and the fjords are beautiful. It is one of our all time favorite cruises, so go and enjoy!

 

Rita

[John&LaLa]

All Royal ships now have VOOM, which Royal sort of led people to believe was O3b. However, the only ships with O3b are Quantum class, Oasis class, Freedom, and Majesty. Not sure about Empress. I believe Royal did increase the bandwidth for the Harris Caprock geosync service, but it's still nothing like O3b, and the ping times are much higher than the 200ms or so for O3b.

Ping times on Serenade a week ago were right at 800, even with stream

 

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[Clarea]

Ping times on Serenade a week ago were right at 800, even with stream

Typical for geosync.

[Biker19]

Not sure about Empress.

No O3B on Empress.

 

Biker, who was lucky to see 650ms ping times on Serenade.

[Biker19]

and folks on her in the Carribbean have said they can facetime and stream so I would think it must be O3b for that ?

Many have reported facetime working on non-O3B ships.