TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Club O WiFi

Is the WiFi at Club O good in the suites? Strong signal, good speed or what?
Any guidance or suggestions?
Thank you!

We've found there to be a strong signal, but absolutely painful and horrible bandwidth, especially at peak times (early morning 7-9 a.m.ish) and (early evening 5-7 p.m.ish) - Check it when everyone is at the beach at mid morning or mid afternoon and it's not so bad.

On our last visit I found the strongest signal was not always the fastest speed. There are several routers on the property and I would try different routers vs always selecting the one with the strongest signal. It did seem to work for me. It was a pain to keep switching, but I needed to keep up with work related activity. The speed is not that great as many others will confirm.

Over 1-1/2 years ago in the Spring/Summer 2013 Club Orient Newsletter they mentioned this about TV's and Internet bandwidth... (if it was bad then, it's got to be getting worse now.)

Changes/Upgrades/Improvements

Where are the TV's? The short answer is, not here yet. When we announced the addition of televisions to Club Orient last fall, we had an agreement (so we thought) with St. Martin Cable to provide programming in English & French, as well as music only stations. Since that time, St. Martin Cable has changed their offering to us & we are back to the drawing board on putting a deal together. We hope we can fulfill our promise to provide televisions over the next few months.

I know some of you have expressed concern over the addition of televisions, but each of the TV’s are hotel televisions, which have a sound governor, which controls the maximum volume level possible. The explosion in the use of handheld and portable computers have made the addition of TVs an absolute necessity. We are very limited in the amount of bandwidth we can provide. So many guests are using their multiple electronic devices to download movies, Skype, sling boxes, play games etc., we simply must try to reduce the use of bandwidth hogging applications. In any event, we’ll keep you posted.

When we were there in December, we were sitting at the Perch and they wouldn't give us the access code for our Nook. They said too many people were using it and it didn't have the band width to accommodate all the users. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/duh.gif" alt="" />

We found the wifi sufficient for what we wanted. We only plan to e-mail from our place so it doesn't need to be that fast. The rest of the stuff can wait until we get home (there is a beach out there to be enjoyed and friends to visit with!)

For e mails or Facebook etc...it works fine. To play games etc..it isn't.

If you don't stay at club o...I can understand them not giving you the code....

We stay there and the code is given to us when we check in. I don't think it is meant to be free for everyone...just guests....but I could be wrong.

I would agree. Many restaurants will give you the wifi code if you're eating there, but the Perch is a different situation. Especially considering how limited the wifi is, it makes perfect sense to me that they do not give it out to people not staying at Club O.

Maybe things will be getting better?
From the Club Orient "Winter 2015 Update" Newsletter that just came out...

IMPROVED "SURFING CONDITIONS" ON ST. MARTIN!
Up until last year, the Internet availability on St. Martin, and particularly at the far eastern end of the island where Club Orient is located, was extremely limited. We had to live with 6 mbps of service in comparison to an average mainland house that operates on 40 to 60 mbps of available bandwidth. Fortunately, early last year, our Internet provide (Dauphin) was able to more than triple our bandwidth to 20 mbps!
Although the hurricane took down Dauphin's main antennae on the island and set us back for several months at the end of 2014, the Internet connections continue to improve and we're happy that (unlike the majority of mainland resorts) we can still provide our guests with FREE Internet as a resort amenity!

We are here now and the internet is not good. It is in and out and sometimes the internet connection is just dropped. I really hope it improves as we are here for almost 3 weeks and we need to keep of with personal finances.

We were just there the peak times were terrible but if you tried mid day or very early or very late it actually was quite good

I noticed in the newsletter they said that this technological leap from 6 mbps to 20 mbps occurred "early last year" - so in June 2014 when we were there it was as finicky as described by the most recent posters(at peak times at least) so I guess there isn't really much chance of it getting better anytime soon.

Yeah, I couldn't figure out from the newsletter, they said something about an FAQ, including questions about their internet, and I wasn't sure if there was some info different there than they posted in that newsletter. I guess they were talking about on their facebook page, which I don't have facebook, and when I followed what they said were the directions to get there, I couldn't find anything about the internet..

My experience has been that they have two problems. backend Bandwidth, but mostly their wireless infrastructure. They may well have 20mbps upstream on the backend, but most of the problems I've seen are in the last link between the WAP(s) and our devices. Not sure what is going on with their Wireless WAP infrastructure, but more often then not when I have seen a problem it is that last leg that has dropped.

Hi Mike! When we were there last Nov we staying in unit 100 and it had a WiFi 'tower' right at the corner outside but we also had trouble getting on it even though the 'internet' guy came and worked on it and changed some stuff. Hope you and S are having a good time. You are alot warmer there then we are here! See you both in March! D & A <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Clapping.gif" alt="" />

Would I stand a chance of maintaining a VOIP phone connection?

It was painful, we stayed in the mini suite deluxes with a router 10 feet from our back patio. While email was okay, trying to get onto anything on the web was either impossible or incredibly slow and it didn't seem to matter what time of day either.

We do voip all the time with our kids, I've even taken a work conf call or two.