Digital Ship

IT and communications for the deep sea commercial shipping sector

FleetBroadband, VSAT, Iridium OpenPort - has shipping finally reached the high-speed IP era?

The last twelve months has seen huge strides taken in the availability of higher bandwidth satellite communications systems in the maritime industry, with a growing number of VSAT installations, the release of Inmarsat's FleetBroadband service, and last week's unveiling of the OpenPort system by Iridium.

Is the shipping industry entering a new, broadband era? And, if so, are we ready for the challenges of high-speed internet on our vessels?

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Permalink Reply by Remon van Gijn on April 17, 2008 at 21:10
Emil, thanks.
"the current Value Added Systems will be required for at least 10 year": As with the carrier systems themselves, the user-companies have invested (in any form) much for the last 4 years into private or leased construction (or free) systems for e-mail and B2B/ERP systems (including EDI). These systems usually are made to last, and ROI will be reached shortly providing finally some benifits. As customers hang on to these services, these systems hang on to established connection providers and their systems. These are made for today and require no of few little additional bandwith. Thats why I think some VASés could so a 10 year lifespan (anyone send a Inm-C txt msg lately ?).

"maturity of the services provided", Providers in a strugle to be the first at the finish seem to be making the same mistakes the early land based ISP were doing. Rush one service out before the operational handover ink is dry for the former one. In stead of inovating, making a copy service and rename it. I know it sounds like a bad commercial, but does it seem familiar? Innovation all has to come from external parties while these base their development on land based internet infrastructure. Without innovation and improvement fostered by the Sat. connection providers we are left with 1999's internet technology left overs to forge something creative from that no one has seen before. Maturing the services means to provide required support on a specialist level, accepting that sat.connections are not the same as the last mile of your adsl line at home.
Permalink Reply by Knut Helge Drivenes on March 14, 2008 at 10:41
It is no longer a question IF we're entering a broadband era, it's more a question of when the different owners will join in.
There is no future for "pay per usage" internet in shorebased industry anymore, and once the flat-fee unlimited-usage concept like SEVSAT offers at sea, is getting more and more common, there is no sign that this development will stop at sea either.
Ship Equip experiences a steady increase in demand from owners from all over the world, for our flexible VSAT solution, and we welcome anyone to read more about our solution on www.shipequip.no.

Users dicipline is a question that arised 10 years ago too, when companies started to open up for internet in the offices. If you trust your crew to handle your USD 150 million vessel, I believe you can trust them to use this too.
Permalink Reply by Pietro Amorusi on March 14, 2008 at 15:19
Basically I agree, but regarding last paragraph I guess we should consider two main issues: first, we don't have IT people on board; second, while nobody uses an oil pump or a radar as a toy, not the same for an Internet connected PC.
Permalink Reply by Michel Rieken on March 17, 2008 at 8:19
What is there to misuse by the staff on board?
In case a vessel has a FleetBroadband, combined with a prepaid solution, every member of staff can do whatever he or she likes and just pay as they go.
In case of a VSAT connection, a prepaid solution is also available, but applying certain rules as part of the service provided, lot of misuse can be prevented. It is just a matter of specifying the requirements, and your concerns and find a supplier that is able of answering to all these needs.
Permalink Reply by Ron Vollenga on March 17, 2008 at 14:05
I agree to earlier opinions that the driver for upgrade to a 'broadband' environment should be a Business justification. There are a number of reasons that shipping companies may want to upgrade, but they may not all be as relevant!

On the other side, technologies such as Condition Monitoring and a proper electronic document management system make the step to this new environment much easier to take. Another favourite of me, is standardisation of the IT environment, specifically the LAN infrastructure. With broadband coming closer, this is a good opportunity to establish a common LAN infrastructure for both landside as shipside IT networks.

This will allow shipping companies to provide better crew IT facilities and treat them almost equally to office staff with regards to IT rules within the company.
Permalink Reply by Emil Regard on April 9, 2008 at 20:50
Broadband is inevitable, and ships are simply lagging behind most other industries. I agree with others in this post who have hinted that its not about the bandwidth, but more about applications requirements. Those requirements will need an IT infrastructure somewhere for support. Applications and IT infrastructure will only come with fundamental business plans that show some kind of return on investment.

Beware of broadband for broadband sake, and companies simply selling bandwidth without applications support. Its all about the application and response time - the bandwidth requirement follows this.

That goes also for any solution that adds crew based VoIP or Internet - its more than bandwidth and simple connections, and includes protecting the commercial network (bandwidth and security) and managing crew access.
Permalink Reply by Jn on April 29, 2008 at 11:08
My personal 2cents worth.

Broadband is a definate and sure thing for maritime.
Big players in maritime industry would surely see the potential and possiblity of Broadband onboard fleets.

Do not see Fleet Broadband to benefit only IT on maritime, safety and operations can be integrated closely with Fleet Broadband.

So close yet not so near.

Before we even smelled the Broadband under our nose, we have came out with so much policy / control and solutions which we can implement onboard when we finally have Fleet Broadband. In fact, we have even done up a draft budget to explain why and how it benefits the company by installing Broadband onboard.
Permalink Reply by Efthymios Chaldeakis on May 30, 2008 at 13:56
Hello guys,
Well, I have to admit that no market can move a step forward if the professionals in it do not move their minds first. I read all comments and I realise that we are still thinking the vessel as an exotic and remote destination with users from previous century. Nevertheless, we all agree that broadband service is at the gates for all vessels. To tell you the truth I do not see how the on-board user community differs from the office one. Same rules apply everywhere and users are now well educated on new technologies. So for me it is all a matter of carefull design and implementation of an efficient on-board solution based on an efficient broaadband service. The latter one being at the time for me the only question...
Permalink Reply by Grzegorz Pardyka on December 30, 2010 at 19:24

I thing that nowadays we are let say "convicted" for those solution and it is only a metter of time (3-5 years) when it will be a standart in maritime communication. In my opinion the biggest step into the future will be made when Inmarsat Company will put online its I-5 satellite constellation called Inmarsat Global Express with Ka-Band services. 

 

Then it will be busy time for Maritime Engineers (VSAT from Inmarsat Installations and ECDIS Mandatory for existing tankers dead line). Vessel owners will have take care or create IT positions

Permalink Reply by Gordon Wendlandt on January 17, 2011 at 13:09

A minor part of the shipping industry has reached the IP era of communication yet. Imho the high-speed era with reliable bandwidths ist still some time ahead. Before thinking about bringing high speed ip services to a ship one should well consider the real need for such services.

From my experience there a currently not enough applications with an high speed demand onboard of ships. Instead there are many applications requiring a constant connectivity at low bandwith for reasanble costs.

Before migrating ip based services and constant wan connectivity on board of ships any company should well consider the threats this would bring to each ships network and figure out how to cope with it by the means of policies and network security appliances.

If this step is well prepared there would be a great benefit for the ship and the company regarding costs and usability of the communication system.

 

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