After Royal Caribbean and Hurtigruten, Norwegian Cruise Line could be the third cruise company to ink a deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Internet. According to several websites focusing on SpaceX, and ventures affiliated with Elon Musk, NCL has already installed 11 Starlink dishes aboard the cruise ship Norwegian Breakaway.
Reddit user u/Asleep_Operation2790, took several photos on the Norwegian Breakaway top sundeck, showing a row of Starlink's Maritime dishes mounted on deck 18. The user said the service was not active while he was onboard, and that the ship might be still in early stages of testing out SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet.
“On a Norwegian Breakaway cruise and spotted 11 Starlink dishes. 8 here on the top sundeck and 3 more behind me. It's not active yet that I can see as speeds are slow, IP address doesn't show Starlink, and latency is still 600+ ms. But at least the dishes are installed which means a launch is imminent. When it does launch, it will mean faster speeds, lower latency, and an overall great internet experience compared to the current satellite system.“
Teslarati shared a message from an anonymous source who said that the Norwegian Breakaway is the first NCL ship to test Starlink.
“It’s not running 100% of the time yet, but they turn it on for short times to test it. I was able to test when it was active, and you can see the much lower ping time and lower packet loss when on Starlink.” the source told Teslarati.
Norwegian Cruise Line hasn’t yet made an official announcement about the partnership with SpaceX to add Starlink across its fleet, but it appears as though the cruise line is in testing stage of Musk's revolutionary internet technology.
In response to more information Drive Tesla Canada received a message from NCL that said “We do not have any information to share at this time.”
After Starlink rolled out its Maritime technology earlier this year, Royal Caribbean Group was the first to announce that it will equip its fleet with high-speed broadband satellite internet on its Royal Caribbean International, Silversea teslarCruises and Celebrity Cruises ships.
In October Hurtigruten Expeditions, has announced it will become the first cruise company to complete its entire fleet with SpaceX Starlink internet. The company said the installation across its fleet will be completed by the end of October, and will be free of charge for its guests and crew.
