Your recent experience with premium internet reliability and speed on HAL ships?

[ziawater]

HAL claims to have recently made a major improvement in their shipboard internet service, especially at their premium level which supposedly enables streaming and video-calling.  I would like to hear whether or not your experience on HAL ships in 2019 testifies to the truth of that claim.

 

If you used their premium level internet service this year, please say which ship or ships and what you experienced. Did it meet your expectations?   My concern is the speed and reliability of the service, not so much the pricing.

 

I am a five-star Mariner who had to switch to other cruise lines a few years ago because I began operating my three companies plus international investments remotely while traveling the world most of the year.  At that time, HAL's internet service was both too slow and too unreliable for me to do my daily work onboard, including teleconferencing and online stock trading.  I've been cruising with other lines with great internet service, but I would love to come back to HAL, which I prefer in most other regards.  Up-to-date internet service is non-negotiable for me, as a "digital nomad."

 

Which HAL ships (if any) can now give me the internet service quality I require?  Or is it too early for me to return?

 

Your help will be greatly appreciated.  I have given up trying to get any facts from HAL about this.  They appear to have a long-standing  policy of total unresponsiveness on this topic, which I find insulting to a very good customer.

 

 

[I like vacation]

Sporadic to unusable during the day.  Zuiderdam-Partial Panama Canal Nov 2018 and Oosterdam-Caribbean Jan 2019.  DW works remotely and had best results after midnight and we had an wifi access point over the bed on the Oosterdam.  Can't imagine doing online stock trading with any reliability. 

[sandiego1]

Quite slow and sporadic outages throughout the 2019 World Cruise on the Amsterdam. Completely unusable in mid Pacific and Atlantic as expected.

[ziawater]

Sandiego1, thanks for your candor, though not what I wanted to hear.  I wonder if perhaps only certain ships have had their internet upgraded?  Hopefully, others will tell us.

 

[ziawater]

14 minutes ago, I like vacation said:

Sporadic to unusable during the day.  Zuiderdam-Partial Panama Canal Nov 2018 and Oosterdam-Caribbean Jan 2019.  DW works remotely and had best results after midnight and we had an wifi access point over the bed on the Oosterdam.  Can't imagine doing online stock trading with any reliability. 

 

Thanks.  I like vacation too, but I rarely get one.  I wish I could afford to forget the internet on cruises, but at least I get to work while visiting new places and meeting new people.  Your experience sounds like the "bad old days" with HAL internet I remember from before.  Surely this isn't the "upgrade"?

[edgee]

On Zuiderdam in Northern Europe now. Pretty good reliability for videos and phone calls have about 90% reliability with some delays. We experienced similarly good service on this same ship during Canada/New England cruise last Fall. Other than Celebrity's premium service, my experience here on Zuiderdam ranks as best I have experienced. Much better than Crystal and Oceania which are my most recent experiences cruising other lines.

Edited May 25, 2019 by edgee

[ziawater]

Edgee, thanks.  Some good news at last.  

[cruisinteach2]

Found internet n Oosterdam while on recent Panama Canal cruise ending in Seattle to be quite good. However I only used for email usually at night or early morning.

[VMax1700]

The 'Premium' level is unnecessary unless you want to 'stream', video etc.  The middle level is good enough for browsing, whatsapp call (not video calls) and wifi calling.  We had 24 days in Caribbean and then trans Atlantic.  Only lost connectivity for last couple of days between Spain and Italy.  Apart from that I was happy with the speed and performance of the connection.  It was better than expected.  

[kazu]

The ‘Premium” was pretty useless on the Prinsendam.  I did got it to stream recorded soccer games for DH and it pretty much failed 90% of the time.

 

Internet itself was pretty reliable and the medium package had the same speed IMO as the Premium.  I saw no difference between the 2.

[Jammu2]

I think some of it depends on where you are. We had the premium internet on our Oosterdam cruise in May. It was pretty rough on some days. But then Yakutat Bay is surrounded by mountains and glacier and the Gulf of Alaska is pretty remote.

 

The wifi does have the capability to work as advertised, and we experienced it 3 or 4 out of 7 days, but I think location has a lot to do with it.

[arzz]

Used internet (middle level package) on the  Noordam Pacific crossing this month - middle level package - not the speediest but much better than a couple years ago - only one day out of seven where service was iffy - I assume it was location related. We really appreciated the unlimited package. 

[frankc98376]

Great service for 2 weeks in May on Nieuw Amsterdam- San Diego to Alaska.  Used Skype voice and Face Time several times and crystal clear connection.

[Mary229]

For business and financial transactions I would never use public cruise ship internet.  If it means money it means investing in a private satellite service.   There are many temporary services designed for travelers who need security and reliability 

 

if you wouldn’t do it on McDonald’s public WiFi don’t do it on HAL’s

Edited May 25, 2019 by Mary229

[ziawater]

6 hours ago, VMax1700 said:

The 'Premium' level is unnecessary unless you want to 'stream', video etc.  The middle level is good enough for browsing, whatsapp call (not video calls) and wifi calling.  We had 24 days in Caribbean and then trans Atlantic.  Only lost connectivity for last couple of days between Spain and Italy.  Apart from that I was happy with the speed and performance of the connection.  It was better than expected.  

 

VMax1700, thanks.  Great news.  Which ship were you on?

[TAD2005]

There is no noticeable difference in bandwidth rates between the Surf plan and Premium plan.   When I was on the Eurodam in March, out to Hawaii and south to Tahiti, I had the Surf package.  I found download bandwidths to vary between 4mb/s up to 15 mb/s, using Ookla's Speedtest.net,  depending on time of day and other passenger usage.   All passengers are sharing a single satellite up/down link, so the more users, the slower the speeds.  I had no problems with banking, e-mail, web browsing, and accessing websites.  When I wanted to use VOIP (Skype) and websites that utilize You Tube streaming video, I would connect to my PPTP VPN.   I could make VOIP phone calls and watch streaming video using the Surf plan.  However, during busy periods of the day, I notices a lot of buffering with the streaming video.  Because I was 6 hours west of the eastern time zone, it caused no problems for me.

[Tennessee Titan]

Terrible on the Westerdam TP end of April. Pretty muck blocked my Xfinity Mobile internet phone. Very slow, intermittent (when it was working at all). I definitely don't feel I got my money's worth...

Edited May 25, 2019 by Tennessee Titan

[kazu]

2 hours ago, Mary229 said:

For business and financial transactions I would never use public cruise ship internet.  If it means money it means investing in a private satellite service.   There are many temporary services designed for travelers who need security and reliability 

 

if you wouldn’t do it on McDonald’s public WiFi don’t do it on HAL’s

 

I see you are from the U.S. - so that might explain things.

 

But, my banking sites are secure and locked and we are assured and guaranteed we can use them in places other than at home.

 

One of the reasons I get internet is to keep an eye on my accounts and credit cards and I’ve never had an issue.  The Canadian banking system is a real plus with the innovations they have made 😄 

[Mary229]

I use ship internet only for entertainment.   I have TMobile and have onshore data in all but the most remote areas of the world - think Greenland.  I would never expose myself to a keylogger on public WiFi for my financial  accounts.   I guess since I also sell on the road and process other people’s credit cards I am particularly sensitive to this issue. I assure you the cruise line does not use the public WiFi to take Payments.  The OP is talking about doing financial and business transactions online - I would not do that on public WiFi.  Skype, sure. 

[sailingskyward]

Thank you for posting this question. I was just wondering the exact same thing, having stepped off a 7-day Royal Princess cruise recently. Princess isn’t my preferred cruise line, but they have made significant investments into high-speed shipboard WiFi and it really blew me away. $59 for unlimited WiFi all week, and it was as fast as my home internet. 

[CurlerRob]

On 5/25/2019 at 9:42 AM, ziawater said:

 

HAL claims to have recently made a major improvement in their shipboard internet service, especially at their premium level which supposedly enables streaming and video-calling.  I would like to hear whether or not your experience on HAL ships in 2019 testifies to the truth of that claim.

 

If you used their premium level internet service this year, please say which ship or ships and what you experienced. Did it meet your expectations?   My concern is the speed and reliability of the service, not so much the pricing.

 

I am a five-star Mariner who had to switch to other cruise lines a few years ago because I began operating my three companies plus international investments remotely while traveling the world most of the year.  At that time, HAL's internet service was both too slow and too unreliable for me to do my daily work onboard, including teleconferencing and online stock trading.  I've been cruising with other lines with great internet service, but I would love to come back to HAL, which I prefer in most other regards.  Up-to-date internet service is non-negotiable for me, as a "digital nomad."

 

Which HAL ships (if any) can now give me the internet service quality I require?  Or is it too early for me to return?

 

Your help will be greatly appreciated.  I have given up trying to get any facts from HAL about this.  They appear to have a long-standing  policy of total unresponsiveness on this topic, which I find insulting to a very good customer.

 

 

 

The info below describes our experiences while on ms Amsterdam, World Voyage - Sydney to Ft. Lauderdale, March 6 - May 16th. I can't comment on whether it was unique to the vessel, or fleet-wide. The service (premium) can only be described as abysmal - clearly a huge lack of capacity and vastly oversold.

 

Outages (significant - multi-hour): March 16, 17, 18, 19, April 17, 25, May 16.

 

Basically unusable service - frequently couldn’t even load email, Skype fails all day due to weak signal, 5 minutes to load a simple web site, NY Times (free) not accessible:  April 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 27, May  8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16 (at FLL pier!).

 

April 18 apology note, promising “proportional” compensation. April 27, credited $33. Paid $930 for three legs. April 19 - 24 some improvement (note CEO joined the cruise 4/18).

 

April 28 - May 4 emails suddenly fail constantly, won’t send from any device or user id. Web browsing ok. Email works fine on shore, multiple tests. Advised by staff that “some providers don’t work (examples Comcast, Bell Canada) - no fix - it may come back” !! (Returns May 4).

 

Service levels improved somewhat on May 5, but video calling still fractured on the occasions when it worked.

 

CEO advised passengers in his address that this level of service was "not where they want to be", "takes time", and is an "industry-wide problem". I totally disagree - this was clearly a capacity issue at many times - the difference in speed between 3am (when most are asleep) and 8am was massive.

 

I did not find the 500MB throttle point an issue, but that is in part because video calling was so restricted. Updating apps resulted in throttling, and even worse speed.

 

When you advertise video calling, but the system won’t even handle email, it is worthless. Pitiful service - I had blazing fast satellite (not cellular) service on a HAL tour bus in Jordan, which decayed to zero when I walked 50 feet from the bus to the ship and connected to the HAL service.

 

As you can tell, I was less than impressed - hope this helps somewhat. Would you post the lines that have provided you with acceptable service? That would be useful.

HAL Internet Access.pdf

Edited May 26, 2019 by CurlerRob
Formatting

[Moriah]

41 minutes ago, CurlerRob said:

 

As you can tell, I was less than impressed - hope this helps somewhat. Would you post the lines that have provided you with acceptable service? That would be useful.

HAL Internet Access.pdf 1.72 MB · 2 downloads

 

Oh my.  I will be on Amserdam in August for 2 weeks and was getting excited to use the "unlimited" package.. but if it's not going to work I may just settle for using free wifi in ports.  If these problems are fleet-wide, that is really bad news for getting people like the OP back to HAL!  My question is, however, how much are these problems related to the location of the ship (any ship) at a given time, and how much is the problem the service itself?  In other words, the more remote the location, the worse it is? Or is it just that the ship is not set up with powerful enough internet service? I will post in a few weeks asking if people on Amsterdam this summer in Alaska are having similar problems to those you experienced on the world voyage. (Must have been SO frustrating! My sympathy! :()

 

[CurlerRob]

17 minutes ago, Moriah said:

 My question is, however, how much are these problems related to the location of the ship (any ship) at a given time, and how much is the problem the service itself?  In other words, the more remote the location, the worse it is? Or is it just that the ship is not set up with powerful enough internet service? I will post in a few weeks asking if people on Amsterdam this summer in Alaska are having similar problems to those you experienced on the world voyage. (Must have been SO frustrating! My sympathy! :()

 

 

Moriah, I'm afraid there's no simple answer to your questions. Certainly satellite internet is subject to vagaries in coverage areas, weather and physical blockages (deep fjords for example), and should not be expected to work as well as land based services.

 

However, my experience, and some of the other posts here suggest that it's not just the remote locations . I noted one post that stated poor service in the Med, between Spain and Italy - not what I'd call remote! My thought, after 30 years in the tech world, is that Amsterdam may have some outdated technology, and certainly needed much more capacity.

 

For your trip, you may want to invest in a 1 day package (despite the outrageous cost) as a test, or simply talk to other passengers first. Enjoy the trip!

[Moriah]

4 minutes ago, CurlerRob said:

 

 

However, my experience, and some of the other posts here suggest that it's not just the remote locations .

 

 

Hmmm. Was afraid that might be the case.... Well, I do adore Amsterdam, so will try to focus on her positives and figure out a way to be a little more internet-free than I usually am! As said I'm going to post in a few weeks to see if we can get some first hand reports on Amsterdam's wifi in Alaska. Thanks!

[Mary229]

3 hours ago, Moriah said:

 

Hmmm. Was afraid that might be the case.... Well, I do adore Amsterdam, so will try to focus on her positives and figure out a way to be a little more internet-free than I usually am! As said I'm going to post in a few weeks to see if we can get some first hand reports on Amsterdam's wifi in Alaska. Thanks!

I have never had trouble getting internet in the ports while on an Alaskan cruise.