If you’ve ever been on a cruise, you know that one of the biggest problems for your vacation is the unstable and too expensive Internet. It’s no wonder since it’s hard to get quality Internet on a moving ship in the middle of the ocean. Perhaps that may soon change.
One of the largest shipping companies Royal Caribbean, as well as companies that manage Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises, announced the beginning of cooperation with SpaceX. The cruise company plans to equip its fleet with Starlink internet. According to the company, this will provide an opportunity to provide high-quality and fast Internet access even in the middle of the sea.
Back in the summer, Royal Caribbean tested the service on its ship. On September 5 the company announced that the Internet service Starlink will be available on their ship Celebrity Beyond. They also plan to make it available to the entire fleet by the first quarter of 2023.
We don’t have any details about this collaboration at this time. For example how many Starlink dishes will be needed to provide one ship with Internet, what the speed will be and how they will be able to distribute the signal to all passengers? It’s also not yet known how much it will cost. So far the company has promised that the signal will be enough for passengers to use streaming and make video calls.
Starlink has a service Starlink Maritime, which is designed to provide a signal to the ships. For the time being it is only available in certain parts of North and South America (including the Caribbean), Europe as well as Australia, and New Zealand. The company SpaceX claimed that they can cover most of the world’s oceans by 1 quarter of 2023.
The cruise industry is in decline at the moment. It still hasn’t quite recovered from the pandemic. The fact is that cruise companies are having trouble recruiting employees. Some flights even have to be canceled because there is no one to serve them. In addition, the world is on the brink of a financial crisis and skyrocketing inflation. This could mean that many potential passengers will no longer be able to buy tickets for cruises or spend a lot of money on them.
In the meantime, SpaceX is doing a lot for Starlink. For example, the recent announcement of a partnership with T-Mobile to send texts and calls to cell phones using Starlink. The company is also partnering with Hawaiian Airlines and charter carrier JSX to provide in-flight Wi-Fi. The company is constantly looking for new opportunities to partner with other industries and is developing its own service very quickly.
