Horrendously Slow Wifi on NCL Joy.

[egcruise]

Hello, I'm currently aboard the NCL Joy, and the wifi here is abysmal, to the point where getting anywhere near 1-4mbps is pure luck. I've subscribed to their, unlimited streaming plan, and at this point I'd be more comfortable calling it the unlimited buffering plan... but I digress.

 

This isn't my first cruise, and this isn't the first time I've purchased unlimited internet. What I will say is the speeds are so abysmally slow, and when speaking to the internet manager wasn't helpful, as his response was, "oh it's satellite internet". When I cruised back in November 2018, on the sister ship the bliss I was getting during peak times, download speeds of 14 mbps, and at off peak times speed of 40 plus.

 

At this point, i’m just not sure what I can do. 

[Love my butler]

You can't do anything.  I had the same issue last year on the Joy.  The best they would do is give me a $50 credit after even admitting the internet did not even work for several days.

[robsmom]

Just got off the Bliss and it was terrible.   I was shocked that a brand new ship could be so bad.   They told me that they knew it was poor and were not offering the streaming upgrade from the perk to discourage people from choosing that.  I had upgraded to premium non-streaming. My niece had the same pal .  My husband had purchased streaming plan.  There were times that I could not open a basic website.  I asked about it, and    I did end up with 25% credit on each plan, but when I think about the fact that I paid almost $500 for cruddy internet I am still annoyed.  
 

[BirdTravels]

We were on the Joy to Alaska in August and the service was "o.k.". It was not terrible compared to other ships. But it was not the best we've had on NCL. I was able to live post, uploading dozens of pictures a day. 

[Greenpea2]

1 hour ago, robsmom said:

Just got off the Bliss and it was terrible.   I was shocked that a brand new ship could be so bad.   They told me that they knew it was poor and were not offering the streaming upgrade from the perk to discourage people from choosing that.  I had upgraded to premium non-streaming. My niece had the same pal .  My husband had purchased streaming plan.  There were times that I could not open a basic website.  I asked about it, and    I did end up with 25% credit on each plan, but when I think about the fact that I paid almost $500 for cruddy internet I am still annoyed.  
 

Just off the Bliss 3/1 and totally agree. I had the upgraded "unlimited internet" plan. It was indeed awful. Worst ever on a ship for me. They really need to get with the times and do something, whether or not it's like this on other cruise lines. It was very frustrating. 

[davencl]

Was on the Joy Panama canal cruise.  There were times when dial up would have been faster...   

[crayola1932]

I was also on the Joy Panama cruise, and the IT manager advised us to go to some of the large public rooms because they were closer to the routers.  The speed was impossible in our cabin, but fine in the atrium and the buffet.  

[mking8288]

Not surprised. For those that had reasonable results & success, consider yourself lucky.  Now that NCL is selling/offering multi-user WiFi "discounts" for unlimited access, it is "not" going to get better. 

 

The bottleneck is way, way further upstream with the high orbiting satellites deployed by NCL's tech partner - the onboard hardware, servers & technology/software & apps are fine; until such time NCL can secure newer, lower orbiting satellites, such as those used by Royal & Princess/Carnival, theirs has "lower" latency & support superior speed, etc. with better bandwidth.  

 

Alas, our fiber optics speed is provisioned at 300/300 Mbps and there is simply not practical nor feasible to get anywhere close ... onboard, at a given NCL ship, you would be lucky to get 3 or 4 Mbps, consistently with 500+ ms latency to attempt streaming - dynamically throttled & shared among thousands, and ship's bridge/operations sharing & has priorities (those are on hidden wireless SSiD's when not hardwired ...)