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I was watching some cruise crew videos, and it turns out their biggest expense is internet. I'm curious why they don’t just install Starlink to cut costs and ma

I was watching some cruise crew videos, and it turns out their biggest expense is internet. I'm curious why they don’t just install Starlink to cut costs and maybe sell to guests some "piracy" internet?

jasoncartwright 1y ago
Pirate seaborne internet has been tried. "A Navy officer is demoted after sneaking a satellite dish onto a warship to get the internet" https://apnews.com/article/navy-illegal-wireless-internet-534007ea8b374bce3189c42449902b2c https://apnews.com/article/navy-illegal-wireless-internet-53... https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/09/03/how-navy-chiefs-conspired-to-get-themselves-illegal-warship-wi-fi/ https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/09/03/how-navy...
- isawczuk 1y ago
  Maybe military is not best place to have "piracy internet", yet I think with current tech - internet access should not be an issue.
- emchammer 1y ago
  How in the bloody hell do you install a Starlink on a submarine?
  - jimmydddd 1y ago
    ---The Starlink dish was secretly installed on the Independence Class vessel’s weather deck, where it was relatively out of view. The network was initially named “Stinky”, but it was later renamed to appear to be a wireless printer – despite there being no such devices aboard. ---The Starlink dish wasn’t discovered until a civilian technician, installing a Starshield satellite communications system, noted the device and reported it to a senior crew member.
    - emchammer 1y ago
      Arg, thanks. I literally read that, but there was too much advertising on that site. Maybe the Navy needs to provide Wi-Fi to sailors if it means that much for their morale. And maybe consumer endpoint security needs to be so rock-solid that a sailor can trust their phone/laptop on a voyage.
jotux 1y ago
Went on a cruise last summer, the internet on board was starlink. It was advertised at $30/day.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  It's interesting to contrast Starlink on airlines vs Starlink on cruises. AFAICT, all the airlines rolling out Starlink have made it free on their flights. Which implies cooperation from Starlink -- either Starlink has made "free" a condition of their service, or they've just priced it cheap enough to make free a reasonable option for airlines. There's no good reason why Starlink for cruise ships should be priced significantly higher than on airlines. So either the cruise lines or Starlink are gouging. Or both. Probably both.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    Planes, at most, have a couple hundred people onboard. Cruise ships are getting towards the 10k person mark. One cruise ship will be substantially more load on the local satellites and ground station than a plane will.
    - jiveturkey 1y ago
      The bandwidth of a single starlink terminal is going to be saturated at airplane capacity anyway. The extra number of people on a cruise ship just means service degradation, not excess bandwidth consumption. The price difference is just based on what the market will bear. Trapped on a cruise for a week, you are much more desperate for Internet. Plus you've paid a lot more for the trip and the fee doesn't feel so large compared to all the other upsells. The cruise often is the vacation, whereas air travel is just the means to an end.
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        > The extra number of people on a cruise ship just means service degradation, not excess bandwidth consumption. Which is resolved by charging, a lot, so there's enough bandwidth per active paying person.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> curious why they don’t just install Starlink to cut costs Cruise ships are tiny cities. The density overloads Starlink.
- mmmlinux 1y ago
  Except for all the ships that do use Starlink I guess.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Except for all the ships that do use Starlink I guess Hence why they meter and ration its access. Starlink cannot service an entire cruise ship at acceptable speeds for the same reason it can't service a Manhattan city block.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  Starlink can do half a gigabit per beam and point 8 beams at the same cell. With 5000 people on a ship, that's enough bandwidth for half of them to watch HD video at the same time. On land they want to spread out the bandwidth as much as possible, but on the ocean most cells are empty or only need a time share fraction of a beam, so they might as well focus on those mini cities.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Starlink can...point 8 beams at the same cell Source for this capability?
    - Dylan16807 1y ago
      https://mikepuchol.com/modeling-starlink-capacity-843b2387f501 https://mikepuchol.com/modeling-starlink-capacity-843b2387f5... Beams are 250MHz wide and they have 2GHz of allocation.
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
ajmurmann 1y ago
I thought [name-redacted] in fact used Starlink [link-redacted]
- rahimnathwani 1y ago
  GP is talking about the employees getting their own Starlink sub, and competing directly with their employer's service.
cr3cr3 1y ago
Lately they do, along with LTE/5G deployments near docks. Still expensive as they often outsource the networking to external vendors/
ornel 1y ago
Regular internet on ships is a flat rate for the ship owner (except for Inmarsat, which is hugely expensive and only used if nothing else works) and the big issue is sharing limited bandwidth with all users. Before Starlink this meant blocking all streaming for our ≈35 people crew, unless you used a VPN, which allowed you to bypass blockage and would get you banned if caught. It's a huge cat and mouse game that burned too much of my time. But then, cruise companies are sleazy as fuck and totally deserve this. Source: I was a radio operator on Greenpeace ships for nearly 20 years
jlarocco 1y ago
Probably because they've had internet on cruises since long before Starlink existed and it's expensive to change. And why bother if people are willing to pay for it?

jasoncartwright 1y ago

Pirate seaborne internet has been tried. "A Navy officer is demoted after sneaking a satellite dish onto a warship to get the internet" https://apnews.com/article/navy-illegal-wireless-internet-534007ea8b374bce3189c42449902b2c https://apnews.com/article/navy-illegal-wireless-internet-53... https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/09/03/how-navy-chiefs-conspired-to-get-themselves-illegal-warship-wi-fi/ https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/09/03/how-navy...

isawczuk 1y ago
Maybe military is not best place to have "piracy internet", yet I think with current tech - internet access should not be an issue.
emchammer 1y ago
How in the bloody hell do you install a Starlink on a submarine?
- jimmydddd 1y ago
  ---The Starlink dish was secretly installed on the Independence Class vessel’s weather deck, where it was relatively out of view. The network was initially named “Stinky”, but it was later renamed to appear to be a wireless printer – despite there being no such devices aboard. ---The Starlink dish wasn’t discovered until a civilian technician, installing a Starshield satellite communications system, noted the device and reported it to a senior crew member.
  - emchammer 1y ago
    Arg, thanks. I literally read that, but there was too much advertising on that site. Maybe the Navy needs to provide Wi-Fi to sailors if it means that much for their morale. And maybe consumer endpoint security needs to be so rock-solid that a sailor can trust their phone/laptop on a voyage.

jotux 1y ago

Went on a cruise last summer, the internet on board was starlink. It was advertised at $30/day.

bryanlarsen 1y ago
It's interesting to contrast Starlink on airlines vs Starlink on cruises. AFAICT, all the airlines rolling out Starlink have made it free on their flights. Which implies cooperation from Starlink -- either Starlink has made "free" a condition of their service, or they've just priced it cheap enough to make free a reasonable option for airlines. There's no good reason why Starlink for cruise ships should be priced significantly higher than on airlines. So either the cruise lines or Starlink are gouging. Or both. Probably both.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  Planes, at most, have a couple hundred people onboard. Cruise ships are getting towards the 10k person mark. One cruise ship will be substantially more load on the local satellites and ground station than a plane will.
  - jiveturkey 1y ago
    The bandwidth of a single starlink terminal is going to be saturated at airplane capacity anyway. The extra number of people on a cruise ship just means service degradation, not excess bandwidth consumption. The price difference is just based on what the market will bear. Trapped on a cruise for a week, you are much more desperate for Internet. Plus you've paid a lot more for the trip and the fee doesn't feel so large compared to all the other upsells. The cruise often is the vacation, whereas air travel is just the means to an end.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      > The extra number of people on a cruise ship just means service degradation, not excess bandwidth consumption. Which is resolved by charging, a lot, so there's enough bandwidth per active paying person.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> curious why they don’t just install Starlink to cut costs Cruise ships are tiny cities. The density overloads Starlink.

mmmlinux 1y ago
Except for all the ships that do use Starlink I guess.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Except for all the ships that do use Starlink I guess Hence why they meter and ration its access. Starlink cannot service an entire cruise ship at acceptable speeds for the same reason it can't service a Manhattan city block.
Dylan16807 1y ago
Starlink can do half a gigabit per beam and point 8 beams at the same cell. With 5000 people on a ship, that's enough bandwidth for half of them to watch HD video at the same time. On land they want to spread out the bandwidth as much as possible, but on the ocean most cells are empty or only need a time share fraction of a beam, so they might as well focus on those mini cities.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Starlink can...point 8 beams at the same cell Source for this capability?
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    https://mikepuchol.com/modeling-starlink-capacity-843b2387f501 https://mikepuchol.com/modeling-starlink-capacity-843b2387f5... Beams are 250MHz wide and they have 2GHz of allocation.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago

ajmurmann 1y ago

I thought [name-redacted] in fact used Starlink [link-redacted]

rahimnathwani 1y ago
GP is talking about the employees getting their own Starlink sub, and competing directly with their employer's service.

cr3cr3 1y ago

Lately they do, along with LTE/5G deployments near docks. Still expensive as they often outsource the networking to external vendors/

ornel 1y ago

Regular internet on ships is a flat rate for the ship owner (except for Inmarsat, which is hugely expensive and only used if nothing else works) and the big issue is sharing limited bandwidth with all users. Before Starlink this meant blocking all streaming for our ≈35 people crew, unless you used a VPN, which allowed you to bypass blockage and would get you banned if caught. It's a huge cat and mouse game that burned too much of my time. But then, cruise companies are sleazy as fuck and totally deserve this. Source: I was a radio operator on Greenpeace ships for nearly 20 years

jlarocco 1y ago

Probably because they've had internet on cruises since long before Starlink existed and it's expensive to change. And why bother if people are willing to pay for it?