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Internet service on Liberty of the Seas


carl67lp

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First-time cruiser here, and I'm very excited!

 

My wife, young daughter, and I leave on the Liberty of the Seas later this month.  While I think we all plan to "disconnect" as much as we can, we want to be sure that we can call grandma and grandpa a couple of times if need be, and maybe send photos or videos once in a while.

 

I know that Liberty has Voom, but I've read conflicting reports as to whether it's the "new" Voom or not.  I don't want to prepay for Internet service that'll end up being so lousy as to be frustrating to use.

 

Anyone have recent first-hand information on this?  Many thanks!

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Hoping someone with first hand experience can chime in for you, but something to keep in mind from reading accounts, is that with the exception of where there are issues with the service, all ships should have 'new' Voom IF they're in a part of the world that has coverage.  In other words, it works great on Allure, but put Allure in the North Atlantic and you're back to slower speeds.  Also remember that you can pre-pay for the discount, and if it isn't to your satification, I don't think you'd have much trouble at all getting  a refund from guest services.  My friend did this when Empress was having some connectivity issues.

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all ships should have 'new' Voom IF they're in a part of the world that has coverage.

According to what I heard on Periscope and I think I read on Facebook, it was reported that Liberty of the Seas does not have the upgraded VOOM equipment installed. I believe that this comes from kcjarvis who received the information from an IT officer onboard.

 

If this is indeed the case, then I consider it false advertising for Royal Caribbean to say "It’s VOOM, the fastest internet at sea – and it’s now available on the entire fleet." Don't set my expectations inappropriately.

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A good friend of ours was on Liberty last week and confirmed the internet on Liberty is not the same as on other ships.

 

You will be able to send photos or texts easily enough.

 

Disappointing to hear that, for sure. Perhaps I won't even bother with getting Internet; we'll be switching to AT&T this month and I might just add their cruise plan for the month.

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I think what kcjarvis said that they could stream Netflix/use VPN/check Facebook and stuff fine, but it wouldn't work for Periscope. 

 

So, it SHOULD be fine, but not sure about Facetime functionality or that type of thing.

I doubt that's the case (sufficient bandwidth for any sort of streaming like Netflix). Assuming that they didn't make any changes to internet connectivity since last October when I sailed on her, then I expect it to be really bad. Wi-Fi would be simply unavailable (the login page would return errors as shown below) for the better parts of a day, and when one could log into the ship's Wi-Fi network, connectivity to the internet was iffy at best.

 

I think that that sailing was perhaps the worst internet service I'd had on a Royal Caribbean ship.

 

post-297-0-56044600-1472752070_thumb.jpg

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Like I said, when something isn't working right, that's one thing.  

 

It strikes me that even when ships aren't seeing the more common (and very fast) Voom speeds, they're still seeing speeds that are much greater than pre-Voom days.  For example, when Ken Jarvis was on Liberty last week his speeds were obviously not adequate for Periscope, but said he was able to stream video, and his speed tests, if I recall, were roughly 1mb down and 2mb up.  Was anyone seeing that speed pre-Voom?

 

Maybe I'm wrong, but while some things on some ships aren't in place, it still seems better than a year ago

 

Now, all of that in mind, I totally agree that RCCL needs to at least clear up the marketing of all of this and come clean.  There are materially different experiences on some ships that don't yet have things working well, and on itineraries where you're outside of O3B's coverage.

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Ken had lunch with the IT Officer on Liberty and this was the explanation that Ken conveyed: Liberty is the only Freedom Class ship that doesn't have O3B satellite dishes and there are no plans for her to get real Voom due to the lack of satellite coverage in the western Carib.

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Ken had lunch with the IT Officer on Liberty and this was the explanation that Ken conveyed: Liberty is the only Freedom Class ship that doesn't have O3B satellite dishes and there are no plans for her to get real Voom due to the lack of satellite coverage in the western Carib.

Seems odd, as we had fine coverage in the Western Carribean on Allure, and plenty of others have based on their scopes.  Hmm.

 

I wonder if the gains seen on that ship with the older tech are because of un-throttling whatever was being done previously.

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I agree with Matt and others that the internet has been greatly improved in the past year across the fleet; however, I also feel it is disingenuous to advertise Voom as if it is the same fleet-wide especially if this is influencing someone's decision to purchase the service.  In the long run, a disgruntled customer who doesn't receive what he/she expects is not likely a good customer. 

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I agree with Matt and others that the internet has been greatly improved in the past year across the fleet; however, I also feel it is disingenuous to advertise Voom as if it is the same fleet-wide especially if this is influencing someone's decision to purchase the service.  In the long run, a disgruntled customer who doesn't receive what he/she expects is not likely a good customer. 

I do agree about that. 

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I will be on Liberty October 30th and am already taking the approach that I will only be able to scope pre cruise, embarkation day, and from the ports thanks to having global travel pass with Verizon. I did call crown and anchor about it and even told them what Ken Jarvis was told about Voom on board last week. If I'm not able to scope while at sea, so be it, just stop advertising it and selling it as Voom. :)

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FWIW we just completed a western caribbean trip aboard the Liberty's sister ship the Freedom. It was our first time getting the internet package and it was spotty at best. Sending picture texts required us to constantly retry and going into any large common areas (pool deck, theater) resulted in us getting kicked off and my phone would repeatedly say "unable to join the network royal wifi". I'm unable to attach the screenshot of the SpeedTest app I used on my iPhone but the results were 191ms ping. 0.49mbps download. 0.24 mbps upload. I'm not sure what package I had since I purchased it before Royal Caribbean split the service into two tiers (surf / surf & stream).

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