Wi-Fi connectivity is a consumer expectation throughout the travel industry. From airports and hotels to airplanes and trains, Ookla has examined all of these just this year alone. Now Ookla has walked the gangway to the cruise ship industry to see what type of connectivity is offered on the seas.

Data from Ookla’s Speedtest Intelligence, and which examined what type of connectivity is offered on the seas, found that SpaceX’s Starlink is now the “provider of choice”, with Ookla noting: Most cruise lines have equipped their ships’ connectivity with Starlink to take advantage of the speed and latency performance of low-Earth orbit satellites”.

Ookla’s data reveals:

• The Starlink cruise line Wi-Fi download speeds perform well, even though it doesn’t keep up with the Starlink in-flight Wi-Fi. Putting aside plans and policies, we can imagine that higher user density loads the cruise ship’s Wi-Fi network more than an airplane’s. Even the cruise line’s 10th percentile at 21.14 Mbps is a serviceable speed for most any application.

• iPhones prevail. Over 60 per cent of cruise passengers carry iPhones compared to 25 per cent with Samsung Galaxy, based on Speedtest samples. This iPhone share, similar to that in the US, reflects a relative mass-market, financially comfortable cruise line customer.

• Older Wi-Fi limits customer experience. With 12.6 per cent of access points on Wi-Fi 4, there is an instant opportunity to improve the quality of connectivity for passengers and crew by upgrading to a newer Wi-Fi generation.

Ookla says most cruise lines have moved to Starlink over the past few years for their internet connectivity. Indeed, the H1 2025 Speedtest data results for Carnival, Costa, Holland America, P&O (all under the Carnival company), and MSC performed in such a similar range that it is clearest to present their results as a group average. This also allows us to easily compare to prior published research on in-flight Wi-Fi performance where Starlink is also the internet provider.

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Categories: Articles, Broadband, Markets, Research, Satellite

Tags: cruise, Ookla, starlink, wifi