Viking Ocean Cruises topped a ranking of the best cruise
ship WiFi service.
The ranking was assembled by telecom provider Frontier Communications,
which asked 20 cruise lines to provide information about data transmission
speeds and costs.
Of the 20, eleven replied on both, Frontier said. In a ranking prioritized by cost for social
media access, called "Best Cruise Line for WiFi Access," Viking and
Regent were joined at the top by Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, Silversea Cruises and
Crystal Cruises.
All five were judged to be "free" of cost in the
survey.
They were followed, in order, by Carnival Cruise Line,
Seabourn, Royal Caribbean International, Azamara Club Cruises, Disney Cruise
Line and Windstar Cruises.
In a separate ranking for business users prioritized by
speeds for streaming content, Viking, Azamara, Regent, Disney and Seabourn were
all ranked "fast" by Frontier.
Viking's average speeds were given as 50 megabytes per
second (Mbps) for downloads and 8 Mbps for uploads, while Azamara's speed was
given as 25 Mbps.
Frontier said that several of the cruise lines refused to
provide any information on speed -- some stated that speeds were too variable
depending on location and weather and others outright stated that they didn't
share the information publicly.