Starlink on cruise ships

Low-orbit satellite internet is the biggest genuine improvement to connectivity at sea in years, and most major lines have now fitted it. It fixed the delay and much of the speed. It did not make wifi free, and it did not make the ship's internet stop being something you buy per device.

What it actually fixed

The old systems used satellites in geostationary orbit, roughly 36,000 km up. The signal has to go all the way there and all the way back, which adds a delay of half a second or more before anything else happens. That is what made video calls so awkward: not slowness exactly, but everybody talking over each other.

Low-orbit satellites sit a few hundred kilometres up. The delay drops to something closer to a normal broadband connection, and the available speed is far higher. Video calls that were painful are now often fine.

What it did not fix

It is still shared. A ship is several thousand people on one connection, and the pattern has not changed: fine in the morning, noticeably worse in the evening when everyone is back in their cabin, worst on a sea day when nobody has gone ashore.

It is still sold per device. Better satellites did not change the commercial model. A family of four who all want to be online is still four packages on most lines.

Coverage is not universal. It is good across the main cruising regions and less reliable at far northern and southern latitudes. It can also drop in port, where terminal buildings get in the way.

What this means for what you buy

If you last cruised a few years ago and wrote the wifi off as unusable, it is worth another look — particularly on a newer ship. If you are choosing a tier, the improvement makes the streaming and calling tiers more genuinely usable than they used to be.

What has not changed is the arithmetic for a family. One package for the person who might be needed at home is usually enough, because the onboard problem is better solved another way.

The onboard problem is a different problem

Faster satellite internet does nothing for "where has everyone got to", which is the question most people on a ship actually have. That one does not need the internet at all.

CruiseLink passes messages straight between the phones in your group over Bluetooth and the ship's local network, free, with every phone in airplane mode. It reaches only your own group, everyone needs it before they sail, and a message travels when phones come near enough rather than instantly across the ship.

Get CruiseLink

Free, no account, nothing to set up beyond your group. On iPhone and Android, and the two work together.