A Sea of Change Transforms Maritime Communications

Transcription

1 A Sea of Change Transforms Maritime Communications

2 Editor s Letter The expansion of the maritime communications market shows no signs of slowing, but a diverse range of customers with a broad set of requirements makes it difficult for companies to serve the market. Communications providers looking for a cost-effective, technologically advanced means of providing maritime communications have a simple answer to their question of how to implement or enhance a maritime communications solution. idirect's technology enables companies to provide broadband, always-on services to all sectors of the maritime market commercial shipping, cruise lines, oil and gas exploration, fishing, and yachts. Here is a sampling of idirect's maritime partners and how they are using idirect's satellite-based IP communications offerings to serve the various sectors of the maritime markets and how idirect is helping each of its partners tailor their offerings to the markets they serve. Sincerely, Jason Bates Editor, Via Satellite Magazine Editorial 301/ Jason Bates Editor, ext Julie Blondeau samuel Managing Editor and Online Producer, ext Design/Production Vince lim Senior Graphic Designer, ext 1680 sophie chan-wood Production Manager, ext 1671 Access Intelligence, LLC don pazour Chief Executive Officer ed pinedo Exec. Vice President & Chief Financial Officer paul F. Mcpherson, Jr. Divisional President, Access Intelligence Business Media Joe rosone Vice President & Satellite Group Publisher Michael Kraus Vice President of Production and Manufacturing Subscribe to Via Satellite digitally at Letter From idirect Satellite communications has extended high-speed connectivity to an impressive variety of remote locations delivering broadband wherever and whenever terrestrial networks cannot operate. It s fair to say we re meeting the challenge of constant connectivity on land. The next frontier lies above and beyond bringing broadband to the skies and across the oceans. idirect is engaged in a major engineering effort to make broadband communications mobile. One area where we have achieved considerable progress is the maritime market. Together with our partners, we ve worked tirelessly to address the growing communications needs of this industry from greater crew welfare to increased productivity through onboard applications. Over the past five years, idirect has established a leadership position in the maritime industry. And today our partners are capturing high-margin opportunities. Our satellite communications platform supports a diverse range of business models leading satellite operators expanding their vertical capabilities, network operators extending their geographic reach to cover the sea, service providers upgrading their capabilities to meet broadband demands onboard, and maritime equipment suppliers adding VSAT broadband to expand their product portfolio. This supplement to Via Satellite Magazine profiles how several of our key partners are using the idirect platform to serve the maritime market successfully. It s a great example of how idirect is developing market-driven solutions that empower our partners to reach for new horizons. Sincerely, David Bettinger Chief Technology Officer 4 Choke Cherry Road, Rockville, Maryland s 2

3 A Sea Of Change Transforms Maritime Communications For decades, communications networks onboard maritime vessels have been highly restrictive pay-by-the-minute, pay-by-the-byte, narrowband service frugally shared by crew and passengers to connect to shore. Today, this model no longer works as maritime companies struggle to retain crew who are spending longer stretches at sea. It doesn t appeal to a new generation of prospective crew who are immersed in a world of non-stop communications. Limited connectivity is also a detriment to maintaining normal business operations. Shorter stays in port, increasing customer demands and tighter security regulations leave less time for critical repairs and the exchange of cargo information. This challenge is not just impacting shipping companies. Narrowband service is no match for the demanding passengers onboard cruise ships, or luxury yachts, who expect to place a phone call or connect to the Internet without any restrictions or service degradation. To address these issues, marine vessels of all types must be transformed into floating offices, complete with broadband Internet access, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), cellular service and other applications. Fortunately, as the need for bandwidth increases, the maritime industry is moving away from the pay-per-use, pay-per-byte model toward always-on, broadband communications delivered by VSAT networks. According to a recent report by Comsys, VSAT maritime services are projected to grow by more than 400 percent through Already, the use of satellite Time Divisional Multiple Access (TDMA) networks has jumped in the last five years due to technology advancements that deliver an efficient, cost-effective service. The demand for broadband communications is quickly making the legacy pay-per-use systems found on most vessels obsolete, as they cannot provide the speed and guaranteed continuity of service demanded by today s oceangoing ships, says David Bettinger, idirect s chief technology officer. In addition, broadband typically follows a flat-fee pricing model, making it easier for maritime companies to High Speed on the High Seas According to CTO David Bettinger, several key features of the idirect platform are enabling its partners to achieve success in the maritime market: A universal hub that can scale to support network and geographical expansion A shared TDMA platform that makes bandwidth more efficient and service more affordable Quality of Service features that prioritize network traffic according to dynamic needs and guarantee service reliability Automatic Beam Switching that maintains seamless global connectivity across satellite beams A Global Network Management System that monitors and manages remotes on multiple networks from a single location An efficient spread spectrum mobile waveform to enable reliable service on small antennas onboard yachts manage communications budgets and eliminating the need to analyze hundreds of individual charges each month. idirect is playing a critical role in addressing the challenges faced by maritime vessels. Its TDMA satellite communications platform is relied on by 8 of the top 10 network operators and service providers in the market. We ve worked closely with our partners to understand their customers needs, and we have advanced our platform to solve the specific challenges of delivering maritime broadband technology, Bettinger explains. This includes the ability for ships to roam across satellite beams to preserve the highest quality link conditions and to automatically connect from one satellite to another to support global coverage. It also includes the need for a comprehensive Quality of Service capability to manage bandwidth efficiently across fleets, ships and applications. The maritime market is rich with opportunity, adds Bettinger. Our goal is to provide our partners with the most complete set of technologies, enabling them to capture the broadest opportunity possible across every industry segment and in every part of the world. s 3

4 Intelsat Developing a Global C-Band Network As the leading operator of the world s largest satellite fleet, Intelsat has introduced a maritime solution for its customers, Intelsat s Network Broadband Global Maritime Service, that keeps track of their operations located around the globe. This service, developed in conjunction with idirect, is quickly establishing itself as a must have for operators of global cargo fleets, oil tankers and any business that needs to ensure that its vessels have an always-on satellite broadband connection regardless of location or network infrastructure. The offering provides global C-band coverage using three Intelsat satellites the IS-604 over the Pacific Ocean, the IS-707 over the Atlantic Ocean and the IS-906 over the Indian Ocean. Intelsat combines its space infrastructure with teleports worldwide that house idirect hubs. This allows customers to assign a single IP address to a vessel as it moves around the globe and switches coverage areas. We were seeking to meet customer demand for a truly global, always-on, broadband communications service, says Jay Yass, vice president of network services for Intelsat. We decided to leverage our idirect infrastructure for our maritime requirements after an exhaustive evaluation of competing products. According to Yass, supporting global maritime broadband required the development of several technology innovations. We worked with idirect to create the automatic beam switching technology, which determines what satellite beam the network should be on and automatically re-aligns the antenna. The companies also jointly developed a mapping database able to pinpoint from GPS and headings the power and performance of each beam at tens of thousands of locations. This allows the modem to identify which beam is optimized and not lose the signal. The solution was also integrated with several C-band antenna manufacturers to migrate their customers from usage-based services to services that are always connected. Intelsat is leveraging the network to support virtual network operators around the world, providing the infrastructure to service providers who in turn market a maritime solution. Working as a wholesale provider, Intelsat does not compete directly with its customers, and is seeing strong demand for its maritime solutions around the globe. We see maritime companies requiring broadband access across many sectors such as liquid natural gas, oil tankers, container ships and auto carrier fleets the largest class of vessels that are typically transoceanic and have diverse communications requirements that our service offering addresses, says Yass. We have had significant interest for this service from several maritime service providers. The launch has been very successful in providing a truly unique value-added solution to this growing market. s 4

5 NewWave Providing Cost-Effective, Managed Network Services Five years ago, Steve McCabe and his business partners at New- Wave Broadband sensed a compelling business opportunity in the maritime industry providing a VSAT broadband service to distributors that they could actively manage to ensure customer support and satisfaction. McCabe knew that if he wanted to get into that business, he would have to invest millions on teleports, hubs and other infrastructure. Fortunately, McCabe found a different path. At that time, SeaTel came out with the first low-cost, one-meter maritime VSAT antenna, and idirect debuted its VNO package to satellite operators so that someone like us, fairly fresh in market and with limited investment, could put up a carrier, says McCabe, managing director of NewWave Broadband Ltd. NewWave has since built a very successful global maritime business using idirect s VNO model. NewWave buys capacity from satellite operators such as Intelsat and Telesat and packages it for managed services operators around the globe. The idirect platform provides NewWave s customers with a critical element of control over operations. If a problem arises, it allows the ship s crew the opportunity to solve the problem onboard before having to contact onshore technical support. This is especially important in a maritime environment, explains McCabe. If a ship s captain calls a distributor and says there s a problem with service, it can exist in many areas of the network with the satellite, on land, on the ship. More often than not, it s with the ship s network or stabilized antenna. No matter where the problem lies, the distributor has to take the flack. McCabe also points to idirect s broad appeal and application. idirect works with multiple antennas and supports multiple carriers so ships don t have to double up on modems. It s a single technology that can stretch across several beams. We got everything we needed and the ability to grow from idirect. McCabe believes the VSAT maritime communications market has considerable room for expansion, especially as equipment costs continue to fall. Looking at it purely from a cost perspective, if customers are spending over $3,000 per month for communications, they should consider VSAT, says McCabe. Shipping customers like to see consistent communications bills on an annual basis. That s not something Inmarsat affords readily. With VSAT, they receive a single bill on a monthly basis that doesn t change unless there is excessive voice activity. We got everything we needed and the ability to grow from idirect. NewWave NewWave expects to record triple-digit growth for the third straight year. The VNO model was great to get us started, says McCabe. We re now in the process of investing in teleports and idirect hubs. The challenge is to manage the business model as it changes and to adapt quickly. SpeedCast Bringing Ku-Band Services to All Corners of the Globe An established provider of satellite broadcasting, two-way communications and multimedia content services to land-based customers, SpeedCast is expanding its reach to the booming maritime market. The company has developed a seamless, worldwide Ku-band network based on the idirect platform to enable regional and global service providers to offer broadband communications to their shipping customers. idirect has been one of SpeedCast s key technology platforms, offering two-way communications services to land-based customers, says Nick Dukakis, SpeedCast s vice president of business development. Now idirect is allowing SpeedCast to extend these services to the maritime market. SpeedCast is operating the global Ku-band network from its Hong Kong teleport through idirect s ivantage Global Network Management System. We need a large number of satellites to provide a large number of Ku beams to cover the main shipping lanes, says Dukakis. idirect allowed us to evolve to the maritime market because its platform can easily and economically scale to extend our reach as needed. In addition, idirect s automatic beam switching technology makes it simple and effortless for crew to operate and use the service. Dukakis adds, The idirect platform allows us to offer various service plans whereby our customers can draw from pools of bandwidth to use across their ships. It also allows them to prioritize their business applications as they want, fully integrating them with their land-based offices, suppliers and customers, to create a seamless global broadband IP-based network. According to Dukakis, the commercial maritime broadband market is set to take off. VSAT broadband solves several major problems in the industry. For one, addressing the ever growing shortage of skilled maritime talent and recruiting a younger s 5

6 generation of talent used to real-time, always-on connectivity. In addition, VSAT broadband allows the integration of vessels with centralized applications running in corporate headquarters. This brings tremendous benefits to shipping companies in terms of productivity, operations, cost savings and efficiency. idirect s automatic beam switching technology makes it simple and effortless for crew to operate and use the service. SpeedCast Dukakis sees real-time broadband VSAT access with flat-rate fees becoming the norm for daily maritime communications and entertainment services, with traditional L-band, pay-as-you-go services being used as back-up systems. In the next few years, the majority of traffic will be going through VSAT because it can provide broadband speeds, which I would define starting at 512 kbps and going up to 1, 2 and even 4 MBps. If you try to get this performance with L-band, pay-as-you-go services, you will not achieve anywhere near the throughput required to support onboard applications. In addition, the airtime fees will be huge depending on whether you are charged on a time or data transmission basis. Dukakis states that a flat-fee VSAT service will also simplify the billing process and help companies budget without any limitations to their communications or fear of spiraling costs. In addition, many Ku-band systems can be installed and commissioned in hours now rather than days. The maritime industry as a whole is now starting to realize the benefits of flat-fee broadband communications and is deploying VSAT solutions in large numbers. This is the beginning of the next new age in maritime communications, concludes Dukakis. Thrane & Thrane Adding VSAT to a Full Range of Communications Offerings Thrane & Thrane A/S has been involved in maritime communications for 27 years, offering a comprehensive range of products for satellite monitoring, messaging, radio, safety, security, telephone and now broadband. When Thrane & Thrane chose to add VSAT broadband communications to its Sailor product and systems offering, it chose to go with idirect. VSAT broadband communication is the fastest growing segment of maritime communication today, says Jens Ewerling, Thrane & Thrane s global marketing manager for maritime satcom. We see VSAT as an add-on to Inmarsat, with the primary goal of improving crew welfare. Today, crew members simply expect to have ample access to affordable telephone calls and the Internet. Thrane & Thrane markets VSAT systems as a low-cost, high-bandwidth communication system that not only satisfies the communications needs of crew, but optimizes business operations. A tighter operation requires higher band systems onboard. Faster and easier exchange of engine and operational data, and the ability to consult experts in the main office allow maritime companies to better manage their fleet. According to Thrane & Thrane, broadband does not supplant lower-speed services. The company s newly launched Sailor 900 VSAT system offers seamless switching of communication between higher bandwidth, fixed-fee VSAT and pay-per-minute, pay-perbyte services which offer de-facto global coverage. The service provides a wide range of broadband data packages at competitive flat rates. And it also supports phone service through a state-of-the-art Integrated VoIP adapter. Thrane & Thrane also chose idirect to support growing demand from distribution partners around the world. We needed a partner that is available on teleports worldwide, explains Ewerling. idirect is the most broadly deployed technology and was the most suitable partner in that respect. Thrane & Thrane provides full customer support, which it sees as a key factor in VSAT adoption. We are differentiating ourselves through ease-of-installation and ease-of-use, explains Ewerling. With our Sailor 900 VSAT system and service, a shipping company can buy everything from one source and be serviced by a global partner network of On Board Service Centres. This goes for all system elements: vessel-installed hardware, software, antenna, IP connectivity, subscription and telephone calls. For the vast majority of marine electronics companies that sell to ship owners, the whole process is too complicated and resource-demanding. With our solution, the dealer gets an out-of-the-box VSAT system where the idirect modem is pre-configured to the Telstar satellite and ready to go. The captain of the vessel POLONIA, which is a Unity Lines car ferry between Sweden and Poland, stays connected with Thrane & Thrane s service as he crosses the Baltic Sea. s 6

7 SeaMobile's MTN Satellite Services Serving the Discriminating Customer MTN Satellite Services is a division of SeaMobile Enterprises and the established provider of satellite broadband to cruise lines. The company built its business on the idirect platform and serves about 90 percent of the North American-based cruise line market, as well as industrial and commercial shipping players, military and government entities and offshore industry sites. The communications provider now is expanding its business into the superyacht market, and innovative idirect technologies are allowing SeaMobile to address unique end-user requirements. SeaMobile s MTN Satellite Services division converted its global C- and Ku-band networks to 100 percent idirect technology in This allowed the company to improve the economics, flexibility and performance of its service. In the yacht industry, discriminating customers will accept only the best solution, says Brent Horwitz, SeaMobile's vice president of sales. Part of the reason we ve selected idirect is they are able to deliver the bandwidth and the high quality services that our customers demand. The move into the yacht market was a natural progression from the cruise industry as the core network and technology were already in place, but certain technical challenges needed to be overcome. For one, many superyacht owners do not want a large C-band antenna on their vessel, making it critical that idirect could support a global Ku-band network with seamless cutovers between beams, hubs and teleports. Most Ku beams are regional and focused on land, says Kevin McCarthy, vice president of network engineering for SeaMobile. We had to build a patchwork of beams to provide nearly global coverage, and idirect helped us achieve that. McCarthy references other idirect advantages. Automatic uplink control allows the hub to tell the modem to dynamically increase power when needed. This significantly mitigates the effects of weather and partial signal obstructions. Other key idirect features include: VLANS, CIR, TCP acceleration and QoS. When combined with MTN s global, private MPLS backbone, these features help us guarantee network security, bandwidth commitments, quality of service and consistent performance. Part of the reason we ve selected idirect is they are able to deliver the bandwidth and the high quality services that our customers demand. SeaMobile s MTN Satellite Services In addition, the idirect ivantage Network Management System collects and stores detailed performance statistics about the idirect infrastructure and remote modems, allowing real-time and historical data analysis. This information enables technical staff to quickly isolate and resolve problems. Historical data also allows SeaMobile to provide Service Level Agreement and performance reports to our customers. idirect has been a great partner and very responsive to our needs, says McCarthy. Their system has evolved quite a bit, and we would like to think we helped them improve and perfect it over the years. SatPoint Expanding Capabilities through TDMA One viable method for delivering broadband access to marine vessels is through satellite SCPC (Single Channel per Carrier) networks. SCPC service is a good fit for providing high-speed dedicated circuits, but it is typically not a cost-efficient solution for small- to mid-size networks. When a fleet of 10 ships requires broadband, it s more effective to pool multiple ships onto a shared platform to create an efficient, cost-effective service. In 2004, SatPoint established itself in the Swedish market as an SCPC maritime broadband provider. But as the company s customer base grew, SatPoint made a strategic decision to implement an idirect network using TDMA and DVB-S2 to provide cost savings to its clients and expand its potential customer base. We started with SCPC, but switched to TDMA so we could better distribute satellite capacity, says Markus Selin, managing director of SatPoint. We had a number of ship liners, each with their own fleet. With the SCPC solution, the fleet could not allocate the capacity across the ships. Now we can bundle the capacity for the different fleets and share bandwidth among the ships within fleets. SatPoint s new solution uses an idirect hub and capacity from SES Sirius to serve larger and more customers. We have doubled the number of ships that have been connected to our system every year since 2004, says Selin. With idirect, we now have a much more cost-efficient way to allocate bandwidth. The switch from SCPC to TDMA has been greeted well by Sat- Point s existing customer base. Previously, many had been relying on Inmarsat, says Selin. With our new service, they will have much more bandwidth, with an always-on service provision at a fixed cost. That is the key to better ROI. Once you have been exposed to having broadband onboard, it s very difficult to take that away. SatPoint SatPoint is forecasting further growth in its business, and the idirect platform affords SatPoint the flexibility to expand the size of its operations and the types of services offered to customers, pursuing a larger business opportunity. It s a trend to move to VSAT and an always-on solution, says Selin. Once you have been exposed to having broadband onboard, it s very difficult to take that away. s 7

8 Advancing a Connected World idirect, a subsidiary of VT Systems, is transforming the way the world gets and stays connected. The company s satellite-based IP communications technology enables constant connectivity for voice, video and data applications in diverse and challenging environments. These include extending private networks to remote offices; supporting mobile connectivity across land, sea and air; providing rural telephony and Internet broadband; and maintaining communications in the wake of disasters and network failures. The idirect Intelligent Platform integrates advanced technology into idirect s portfolio of hubs, routers and network management software to address the growing complexity of deploying and managing global IP networks. With more than 13 years of global satellite communications experience, idirect serves customers in 50 countries through a diverse network of channel partners, including some of the largest satellite providers, operators and carriers in the world and seven of the World Teleport Association s Global Top Ten. Headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, idirect has offices in Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. idirect, Inc Sunrise Valley Drive Herndon, VA