Free Wifi

[drewdrewcruiser]

When you get Free Wifi as part of your booking, is that basic Wifi or does it include streaming? If it doesn't include streaming, how much would it cost to upgrade or would I have to pay full price for the streaming Wifi? 

[ECCruise]

2 minutes ago, drewdrewcruiser said:

When you get Free Wifi as part of your booking, is that basic Wifi or does it include streaming? If it doesn't include streaming, how much would it cost to upgrade or would I have to pay full price for the streaming Wifi? 

Basic.

Cost is determined by number of days.

[drewdrewcruiser]

12 minutes ago, ECCruise said:

Basic.

Cost is determined by number of days.

But would they let you pay the difference between the two?

[pcakes122]

10 minutes ago, drewdrewcruiser said:

But would they let you pay the difference between the two?

Yes.  You get about a $125 credit for the free Wi-Fi. Upgrading to a streaming package onboard runs about $100. Unless you desperately need it on Day 1, wait until Day 2 to do the upgrade - it's cheaper. (Tip I got from an NCL Internet Manager.)

[Back to school]

One example,  9 days:

 

Upgrade to Unlimited Premium Wi-Fi (with Streaming)

Close Details

Upgrade your Free at Sea Internet minutes package to Unlimited Internet for a fraction of the price, regular retail rate is $34.99 USD/day.

_$144₉₁

per person

[UKstages]

my experience has been that the upgrade is cheaper if you pre-purchase prior to the sail date.

 

the internet quality is poor for the basic service and good only for email and app usage, but it is slow. they say it's good for web browsing, but my recommendation is to bring a  book with you so you'll have something to do while pages load.

 

some do report great satisfaction and success with streaming and overall response time with the premium wifi, but i've never tried it myself.

[drewdrewcruiser]

3 minutes ago, UKstages said:

my experience has been that the upgrade is cheaper if you pre-purchase prior to the sail date.

 

the internet quality is poor for the basic service and good only for email and app usage, but it is slow. they say it's good for web browsing, but my recommendation is to bring a  book with you so you'll have something to do while pages load.

 

some do report great satisfaction and success with streaming and overall response time with the premium wifi, but i've never tried it myself.

Do you mean pre-purchase the premium prior to sailing and then they will credit you the difference between that and the free basic wifi onboard or do they credit you the difference at time of purchase?

[pcakes122]

6 minutes ago, drewdrewcruiser said:

Do you mean pre-purchase the premium prior to sailing and then they will credit you the difference between that and the free basic wifi onboard or do they credit you the difference at time of purchase?

The upgrade price on the website already takes into account the credit for the free Wi-Fi,  so no additional credit due.

[pcakes122]

53 minutes ago, drewdrewcruiser said:

When you get Free Wifi as part of your booking, is that basic Wifi or does it include streaming? If it doesn't include streaming, how much would it cost to upgrade or would I have to pay full price for the streaming Wifi? 

One note about streaming Wi-Fi performance.  I've been lucky and never had an issue, but I only rely on it to watch live TV or YouTube or a movie here and there. If I plan to binge watch a TV series or have favorite movies I know I'll want to watch, I download them to my device in advance from Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBOMax, Hulu, etc. before sailing. (Same with music and audio books.)

[mking8288]

WiFi pricing are subject to change, upon advance notice or without - NCL hasn't raise them in a while, unlike the DSC, shorex and other extras ... YMMV.  

 

The daily price difference between basic/timed & unlimited vs. premium/streaming, looking at ours quoted for early 2022, is $5 per day x number of days purchased.  It has ultra high latency and the worst bandwidth among the big 3 cruiselines, and pricey with its hybrid high-orbit satellite coverage.  Lately, ships were lucky to sail close to on-time and/or by early evening ... sometimes taking more than an hour+ close to shores until it is out to sea & international water, and some folks having early dinner, if not still docked at the pier & waiting for late arriving fellow cruisers.  IMHO, there is really no need to pay full price for at best, 6 to 8 hours of WiFi internet coverage as after 12:00 am - it is a new 24 hours day.  Buy/upgrade or make the change at 12:01 - you just saved a day's worth of "broadband" fees / P and P+ like us get a discount. 

 

When you purchase or upgrade onboard, billing system will apply any non-refundable OBC issued for that sailing (i.e. as in the ship was unable to dock or tender at a stop, spend an extra day and port taxes/fees/courtesy credits were issued) to offset it.  If you prepaid, you are charge upfront and ... you could end up with more non-refundable credits toward the end, than you can use or spent.  Of course, that's not "my" money to spend for you, you decide on what's best & wise.  

 

Ship's WiFi inTRAnet is free and if you connect with the "Cruise Norwegian" App once onboard, it will give you an idea of how good, slow or "fast" the connection is to the hardware/servers - and their website < ncl dot com > is always accessible & free to connect, regardless. 

 

Case in point, if we want to upgrade our limited minutes/data (just under 400 minutes combined) to unlimited when sailing a typical 7 days itinerary, our cost for "one registered device at a given time connection" is about $72 by holding off to convert at 12:01 am on Day 2 ... and, we can still use up/share some of that 60 to 65 minutes each (130 to 140 minutes between 2 of us) on Day 1 first.  

 

There is really no advantage to purchase and prepaid in advance, and if you are getting that FAS 250 free minutes anyway, you still have to create a log-on and register to activate, and, a few extra clicks and prompts later, you can upgrade/convert your plan with all the options displayed. 

 

For the OP, NCL's streaming WiFi at sea is going feel slow, very slow compared to your recent experience using WiFi onboard RCL. 

[drewdrewcruiser]

1 minute ago, mking8288 said:

WiFi pricing are subject to change, upon advance notice or without - NCL hasn't raise them in a while, unlike the DSC, shorex and other extras ... YMMV.  

 

The daily price difference between basic/timed & unlimited vs. premium/streaming, looking at ours quoted for early 2022, is $5 per day x number of days purchased.  It has ultra high latency and the worst bandwidth among the big 3 cruiselines, and pricey with its hybrid high-orbit satellite coverage.  Lately, ships were lucky to sail close to on-time and/or by early evening ... sometimes taking more than an hour+ close to shores until it is out to sea & international water, and some folks having early dinner, if not still docked at the pier & waiting for late arriving fellow cruisers.  IMHO, there is really no need to pay full price for at best, 6 to 8 hours of WiFi internet coverage as after 12:00 am - it is a new 24 hours day.  Buy/upgrade or make the change at 12:01 - you just saved a day's worth of "broadband" fees / P and P+ like us get a discount. 

 

When you purchase or upgrade onboard, billing system will apply any non-refundable OBC issued for that sailing (i.e. as in the ship was unable to dock or tender at a stop, spend an extra day and port taxes/fees/courtesy credits were issued) to offset it.  If you prepaid, you are charge upfront and ... you could end up with more non-refundable credits toward the end, than you can use or spent.  Of course, that's not "my" money to spend for you, you decide on what's best & wise.  

 

Ship's WiFi inTRAnet is free and if you connect with the "Cruise Norwegian" App once onboard, it will give you an idea of how good, slow or "fast" the connection is to the hardware/servers - and their website < ncl dot com > is always accessible & free to connect, regardless. 

 

Case in point, if we want to upgrade our limited minutes/data (just under 400 minutes combined) to unlimited when sailing a typical 7 days itinerary, our cost for "one registered device at a given time connection" is about $72 by holding off to convert at 12:01 am on Day 2 ... and, we can still use up/share some of that 60 to 65 minutes each (130 to 140 minutes between 2 of us) on Day 1 first.  

 

There is really no advantage to purchase and prepaid in advance, and if you are getting that FAS 250 free minutes anyway, you still have to create a log-on and register to activate, and, a few extra clicks and prompts later, you can upgrade/convert your plan with all the options displayed. 

 

For the OP, NCL's streaming WiFi at sea is going feel slow, very slow compared to your recent experience using WiFi onboard RCL. 

Thank you for the info.  RC's wifi felt just like being on land and it was much cheaper than NCL.

[mrpauly]

Does windows VPN work on the ship.  It seemed like last time in October had trouble connecting to work VPN (windows always on).  I'll be on the Joy January 8th, wanting to see if anyone else had VPN luck before purchasing the upgraded package.

[BirdTravels]

3 hours ago, drewdrewcruiser said:

When you get Free Wifi as part of your booking, is that basic Wifi or does it include streaming? If it doesn't include streaming, how much would it cost to upgrade or would I have to pay full price for the streaming Wifi? 

I just upgraded my wifi for an upcoming cruise and it was $119.93 to go to an unlimited streaming wifi. 

 

If you're surfing web pages, NCL will do an o.k. job. They use a cache server to pre-fetch pages to give you a more land-like experience. If you are randomly going to pages or doing something interactive (like live posting from the ship),,, it will seem slow as mud. 

 

That being said, I had awful wifi performance on the Adventure and Freedom of the Seas this year. Voom did not go Vroom for me. 

[hallux]

8 hours ago, mrpauly said:

Does windows VPN work on the ship.  It seemed like last time in October had trouble connecting to work VPN (windows always on).  I'll be on the Joy January 8th, wanting to see if anyone else had VPN luck before purchasing the upgraded package.

If you read the package descriptions you would see that the premium WiFi is needed for VPN.

https://www.ncl.com/onboard-packages/internet-packages

[mrpauly]

I had upgraded premium package to VPN and it didn't work.  I will try again on my January 8th cruise. Thanks

[Smileonboard]

We upgraded to premium on the Gem and it has worked really well - a few times it drops but comes right back. Our bigger issue was texting each other on the ship - I only both one premium package so we shared but we had gotten unlimited text for our phones from AT & T and that has been a disaster-