Carnival Horizon, the newest cruise ship from Carnival Cruise Line, recorded an unparalleled data rate that was initially achieved at the ship’s naming ceremony on May 23, 2018 in the New York harbor.
Carnival Horizon delivered 3.174 Gbps of satellite bandwidth giving the cruise ship the most impressive WiFi solution in the cruise industry. This is great news for cruisers as more and more passengers look to be connected while at sea.
This transformative Internet experience follows on the successes first enabled onboard Carnival Vista, which has been hosting the frictionless high-bandwidth Internet solution for over six months. Carnival Cruise Line is working on plans for further rollout of the next generation connectivity solution throughout the entire fleet of 26 cruise ships.
Carnival Cruise Ling offers three different WiFi plans onboard their cruise ships. Plans range from $5 per day for access to social media sites to $17.70 per day for the premium plan that allows for the fastest speeds. The cruise line offers a discount of up to 20% off if purchased before a cruise.
This new WiFi from Carnival will allow passengers to have a seamless experience without any slowdowns or delays.
The solution uses “best of breed” bandwidth from multiple satellite operators, in this case leveraging both Intelsat and Telesat. This approach consists of selecting the best satellites in terms of power, look angle and coverage, including the latest high-throughput satellites with beams specifically designed for maritime applications, in order to deliver a land-like connectivity experience. Intelsat and Telesat were key players in the achievement of this exceptional connectivity experience, securing the necessary capacity and working in close partnership with the Speedcast team for engineering.
Carnival Cruise Line and Speedcast have collaborated to create the industry’s first ever fully-integrated solution that is unique to Carnival, combining blockage-free connectivity using the newest and most powerful Intellian antennas on the market today, leveraging frequency spectrums across C-, Ku- and Ka-Band. Utilizing multiple bands and frequencies based on ship location, weather conditions, bandwidth availability and satellite coverage provides enhanced resilience and optimization, and allows all guest, crew, voice and corporate traffic to have simultaneous access to all available links at all times.
The traffic is then routed accordingly via Speedcast’s global MPLS network, reaching its final destination with minimal latency to provide an industry-leading connectivity experience never achieved before.
The entire network is monitored by Speedcast 24/7 Network Operations Centers, which support connectivity to approximately 70% of all cruise passengers around the world.
