Hi, we cruise a LOT on NCL and always now buy the unlimited package since their internet is so antiquated on all ships (including the newest, the Escape), that buying by the minute is a path to nowhere.
I had an instance a year ago similar to the Apple story shared on another forum, but it was on my Samsung S5 android. The internet “manager” of course couldn’t help, and of course blamed it on the device. I did a lot of googling on the laptop I carry and finally found 1 other instance of it happening with a solution. It worked perfectly and I even printed it off and gave the internet manager a copy of the solution. I’m sure he didn’t share it with the rest of the fleet and probably through it away. It’s sad to go to the internet managers desk and hear all the people complaining and upset by how horrible the service is and how their “minutes” get consumed while their screens take 5 minutes to move to the next. Some cruise lines are advertising introduction of a more normal internet connection, but I haven’t run into anyone who has use any of those few ships.
One thing I tried on our just concluded 32 cruise to the Far East was a small inexpensive device that converts the local cell network to internet for your devices. The one I tried was called Skyroam and it was good for all the countries we visited in the Middle East and Far East. It charges you a flat $8 per day if you buy the days in packages of 5 at a time. You get unlimited internet for 24 hours and for as many devices as you want to connect to it. In many countries it worked fantastic and I’d just carry it in our backpack while ashore and we had internet all day whether on excursion busses or wherever onshore. I did have two countries where is connected fine to the local cell service, but we were not able to use it reliably, so those days I just asked for a refund on.
One thing I am going to try on my next cruise is the use of a “travel router”. It is a tiny router that you can plug into your room’s power, log it into your cruise internet account. From then on you connect your phones & pc to the router. It theoretically then allows multiple connections at the same time. Currently only me or my wife can be online at a time, so can get competitive trying to upload pictures at the end of a day in port or catch up on email, etc. It also should provide excellent security when on a public network like on a cruise ship, or at a Starbucks, or when you are in a hotel room, etc.
Dave