Marine broadband addresses workboat market
A new service targeted at small commercial vessels aims to provide entry level broadband which can deliver SMS, voice and IP data up to 150kbps.
Inmarsat has developed the service to address the needs of smaller commercial workboats like dredgers and short sea coasters as well as fishing vessels with lower data requirements than the high performance FB250 and FB500.
The new FB150 will offer a voice connection at landline quality, accessible simultaneously with internet capable IP data and simple to use SMS. The first manufacturers of FB150 hardware will be Thrane & Thrane and AddValue, which is partnering with SpaceCom for antenna production.
The company is aiming to keep it cheap enough to be a viable option for the lower end of the market, with the FB150 hardware costs and service charges to be kept within a ‘competitive’ range.
‘Inmarsat and the FB150 manufacturers are committed to ensuring the terminal pricing will address the needs of the sub $5,000 hardware sector, said Piers Cunningham, head of maritime business at Inmarsat. ‘Owners of smaller vessels want to explore the benefits of internet access and they want a service that is priced accordingly. FB150 will address these requirements in a package suitable for use onboard smaller maritime platforms.’
The other thing the company is aiming to do is to make it simple to get up and running. Thus the FB150 has a compact above deck antenna unit, while the below deck unit is similarly scaled and offers standard interfaces to allow quick and easy connection to PCs and off the shelf peripheral services.
Immarsat wants to get it onto the market for the middle of next year and have gone as far as putting into the suppliers contract ‘specific and significant schedule performance incentives’ for the manufacturers.
Casper Jensen, maritime global marketing director of Thrane & Thrane says that feedback on the terminals for the larger FleetBroadband service has been extremely positive, with ‘ease of use’ and ‘reliability’ being highlighted by customers, so it was especially important for the developers to ensure that these attributes were carried across to the new FB150 terminals.
Piers Cunningham added that since the company launched FleetBroadband less than a year ago, ‘the take-up has been stronger than expected. We have seen first hand that the service makes a significant contribution to shipping businesses.’
