VOOM Quality

[DunkelBierJay]

It occurred to me that if there are posts or articles rating the VOOM quality on RCI ships, I haven't seen it. My experience has been that since VOOM has been rolled out, the quality varies by ship and what I have seen subjectively is this:

• Independence -- 9 out of 10 -- about like the quality I get at home
• Navigator -- 6 out of 10
• Symphony -- 9 out of 10
• Allure -- 8 out of 10
• Brilliance -- 7 out of 10

I wonder what others' experiences have been.

[WAYNO]

20 cruisers will have 20 different experiences.

November 2021, Oasis, the VOOM was mostly unusable.  I was at home, my Wife was cruising, and I was not able to communicate with her.   We found out later that subsequent cruise(s) on Oasis, VOOM was so problematic, folks received a refund for the VOOM experience.  We received nothing.

February 2022, Odyssey, First 5 days it was great.  Then it also became hit or miss for the remaining days of the cruise.

Hit or miss describes most of our VOOM experiences.

[Moby Dick]

1 hour ago, DunkelBierJay said:

It occurred to me that if there are posts or articles rating the VOOM quality on RCI ships, I haven't seen it. My experience has been that since VOOM has been rolled out, the quality varies by ship and what I have seen subjectively is this:

• Independence -- 9 out of 10 -- about like the quality I get at home
• Navigator -- 6 out of 10
• Symphony -- 9 out of 10
• Allure -- 8 out of 10
• Brilliance -- 7 out of 10

I wonder what others' experiences have been.

I don't use the internet much while on a ship.  The little I have used it, VOOM that is, I had no complaints.  The Wifi would drop every now and then.  But, I get that at home, too.  So, I don't think I can give it a realistic X out of XX rating.

[fa-li]

I think it varies not just by ship but also by cruise/passenger makeup on same ship. Voom was fairly good on Harmony last week. A couple on second leg of b2b said awful the week before bc there were so many teens onboard for spring break. 

[ihaoan]

on a March sailing on Adventure in the western Caribbean, Voom surf was great, good enough to make wifi phone calls back home

[leesam82]

I think the experience with voom is going to be highly variable. There are so many factors that can go into the actual speeds experienced on board. Last year on the Anthem of the Seas sailing in November the speed wasn't great but still useable.  

[WAYNO]

I know, old topic...

My Wife is on Harmony of the Seas, Day 2 of a 7-day CocoCay/St. Maartens/USVI cruise.

She called on her cell phone yesterday saying the ship would soon be leaving the dock.  I've heard not one word from her since. 

I suspect VOOM is back to its old familiar tricks.  An expensive novelty, especially when it's unreliable.

[HeyItsGerm]

We've been on all of the Oasis Class ships with it and have never had a problem streaming to two TV's at the same time with Voom. The service has always been great.

The only time we had an issue was when we sailed on Freedom of the Seas. We had occasional buffering but otherwise good. 

[WAYNO]

Again, my Wife just got off a 7-day cruise on Harmony.  It was so unreliable, I was never able to usefully communicate with her from  home. 

The VOOM folks were very condescending with her, and no matter what, it somehow was always her fault.  And the excuses... In the past we  purchased surf but not stream, and when it worked, I was able to communicate via email.  Now, they say it requires streaming also.  So we bought that too.  Still no worky.  And then their next excuse, VOOM is not compatible with Apple products.  Really?

The worker bee searched his computer to declare, "well ma'am, I see you did successfully send some photos on day two, so it must be working".  Therefore, we cannot cancel the remaining VOOM and give you a refund. 

[OCSC Mike]

It was pretty bad on the Harmony 5/29 sailing. Not as bad as you describe, texting wasn't an issue, but lots of dropouts. FWIW, it was worse in my cabin than most public areas.

[Matt]

One thing I've picked up on is auto updates can kill your Voom experience

As an example, I found on my laptop that had Microsoft One Drive each time I connected to voom, One Drive would start trying to synch files. During this process of uploading new files, it would really limit my speeds. Once I paused onedrive updates, Voom worked much better.

Ditto on my iPhone with auto update apps.

Something to consider in the future.

[twangster]

There are two components of Royal's technology in play as it relates to the user experience for satellite internet on board a ship.  The satellite connection to the internet and the WiFi WLAN on board the ship.  

On many Quantum class ships I've had WiFi issues with poor coverage.  Last month on Quantum I had an access point in the hallway right outside my cabin but I had to prop open my cabin door while blogging that trip. I literally used an empty water bottle to hold my cabin door an inch which was the only way I could reliably use the internet.  This is an example of poor WiFi coverage.  When I was done using the internet I could close my door.  

The other technology that will impact user experience is the satellite uplink to the internet.  This is what impacts most users to a larger degree.  Most users can understand that when a ship is in a rain storm the satellite internet can be impacted.  That's easy to see, look outside to see if its raining.  What's harder for many to understand is that what goes up must come down.  The internet isn't in the sky, it's on land.  At some point your internet bits that were sent up into the sky by the ship have to come back down to earth to actually reach the internet.  The response from a server on the internet has to be sent up into the sky before that can come down to the ship.  If that point on earth where the signals are sent and received is having a bad weather day that too can impact your ship internet experience even if it's bright and sunny where the ship is.  There are many things that can impact satellite internet performance.

As a technical person who does industrial WiFi for a living and as an Apple user with the latest Apple products I can tell that Apple sucks at WiFi.  They really make terrible products from a WiFi perspective and they are getting worse in current times.    Yes, you heard me, Apple sucks, but I still buy their products despite this.  Apple really only cares about the ability for your device to reach Apple iCloud servers.  For Apple, if iCloud is unreachable, that's the end of the world, game over.  This impacts the way their devices behave when the world has ended (in Apple's eyes).    

As @Matt mentioned, auto updates can impact your experience.  Cloud syncing software like Google Drive, OneNote, iCloud, Dropbox and more can silently be sucking up all your bandwidth.  As a photographer I use Adobe products that are notorious for consuming 100% of all bandwidth for hours.   Samsung devices get in on the act to upload gallery items to Samsung's cloud and Amazon Prime photos is another piece of software that loves to consume all or your bandwidth.   Apple's Photos tries to upload all photos you take to the cloud just like Android phones.

If your goal was to kill a satellite uplink a devious person would unleash a thousand phones taking hundreds of glacier pictures as a perfect storm to take the internet connection to a ship out of service.  Yep, that's exactly what happens when all those pictures on Android and Apple devices try to get backed up to the respective clouds once the ship leaves the glacier.  Every single guest who bought Voom and took pictures at a glacier is now participating in a denial of service attack launched against the ship's satellite connection.  The enemy is you, and me.  

[Moorea71]

We have always used the VOOM onboard and for the most part been able to work daily or at least checkin with work.  However, in saying this we just were on Symphony May 14/22 and had the worst experience with internet as the ship had problems the whole week.  The tech was to our cabin twice to help get it working.  Disappointing as it was RCC was great and offered 40% off the internet package we paid and credited our account.  You must know that you roll the dice, no guarantees.

[brdjnr]

I was on Independence last week. I had the surf/stream package. I was able to log into a virtual machine to do a critical work update that took about 20 minutes. Other than that sending occasional email/text it seemed ok. Not blazing by any means but it seemed to work.

[OCSC Mike]

55 minutes ago, brdjnr said:

I was on Independence last week. I had the surf/stream package. I was able to log into a virtual machine to do a critical work update that took about 20 minutes. Other than that sending occasional email/text it seemed ok. Not blazing by any means but it seemed to work.

Good to hear. Was hoping Indy would be better than Harmony was.