Using the Ship's Internet- Skype?

[scottb8888]

Of course my teen-age son who will be traveling with us wants to keep in touch with his GF while we are sailing. I know we are covered with a good deal on Verizon in port, but wondering if the delay is too much while cruising for a video conference like skype to work? I was thinking of brining an iPad so all he could do was Skype and not have voice calling?

Thoughts?

 

[lbus42]

Skype will probably consume too much bandwidth to work. Also it will be very expensive; you will burn through the allotted MB's pretty quick.

 

[DynamicDisneyDuo]

In the past, it was reported that DCL blocked Skype and similar apps like Facetime due to the bandwidth they consumed. I know I have seen reports recently of Facetime working but it will still consume a good amount of data.

What itinerary are you sailing? Can't he just keep in touch with her on port days and use any sea days to relax and get some space?

 

[Dug720]

IF it will work at all, it will be sketchy, likely to drop, and will probably freeze multiple times (my sister who is a CM has used FT before, and I've seen the multiple drops and freezes).

Email/text would be the best and easiest way.

 

[bbel]

When I was a CM I didn't use Skype but used facetime and never had an issue. The only times it didn't work was when the ship didn't have Internet or they turned of crew Internet eg the baltic, hawaii and parts of the TA.
The only issue I had was often having a 9 hour time difference with the people I wanted to 'see' haha.

 

[kiford]

It can be expensive but on our Baltic cruise, DH signed up for the free 50MB the first day then told me he was heading up on deck (docked at Dover) to take pictures. After about an hour I realized he still hadn't come back so I went looking for him. He'd taken pictures and sent them off to some friends at work (in California) and ended up Skyping for about 1/2 hour after they got the pictures. He said that the quality was pretty good (I think it might have been mostly audio, not video). He did churn through the whole 50MB between sending the pictures and the Skype call. This was in July 2015.