With this issue’s theme revolving around the European market segment, speaking with subject matter experts seemed a most logical route for imparting information to our readers. One such subject matter expert who deals with the European Maritime world is David Harrower of iDirect—we managed to ask him a few questions regarding this growing environment.

SatMagazine
David, how would you describe the opportunity for maritime satellite broadband in the European market?

David Harrower
From a global perspective, Europe is the most mature market for maritime broadband services. This is especially true in Northern Europe where operators in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and the U.K. have a very large amount of existing business. This provides an advantage as European operators have the technical capabilities and experience to capitalize on growing global demand for maritime broadband service.

SatMagazine
How are you partners capitalizing on this opportunity?

David Harrower
We are seeing diverse paths to market for our partners. Many operators are establishing customized broadband networks that meet the specific needs of maritime companies. A major trend here is the adoption of shared TDMA networks that enable vessels to benefit from broadband speeds without incurring the costs of a dedicated network when it’s not required. The iDirect platform enforces service levels that can be tailored all the way to the application level. This is a strong model for a market where user activity can fluctuate significantly and where operators often support numerous small to mid-size customers on their networks.

Other partners are having success with our Hosted Network Operator/Virtual Network Operator model, which allows regional service providers to launch a maritime broadband service without a very minimal investment in infrastructure. A number of companies work through our larger HNO customers because it’s financially more viable to get bandwidth where it’s needed and share the hub resources with a HNO. As VNO customers grow and mature it is only logical to expect them to become their own hub operators in the regions where they are particularly successful.

Another model we are seeing is maritime equipment manufacturers growing their business by adding satellite broadband service to their product portfolio. There’s certainly many ways to approach the maritime market and a lot of opportunity for our partners.

SatMagazine
What are the main growth opportunities you see in the maritime market?

David Harrower
Nearly all sectors of the industry are increasing their reliance on satellite connectivity. Probably the biggest opportunity is commercial shipping. We’re seeing a major rise in ship production coupled with greater demands for vessels to support business applications onboard. Ships are spending less time in port to meet growing demand and to alleviate security concerns. That’s less time for maintenance, for connecting to land-based networks, for crew to see their friends and family.

As a result, the ship is becoming a bona fide remote office. There’s greater reliance on VoIP, email, Internet access, videoconferencing and file sharing. Ship operators need constant access to real-time logistics and operations data. And crew members increasingly want broadband access to deal with the increasingly long stretches at sea.

In this environment, the traditional L-band service, where you pay per minute or per data byte is too costly. It’s not the right match for the industry’s growing connectivity needs. Instead, many commercial shipping companies are switching to a flat fee per month model for broadband connectivity with a guaranteed throughput.

SatMagazine
What other markets are heating up?

David Harrower
In the yacht and luxury vessel market, we’re seeing high demand for Internet and cellular connectivity. The challenge here is demanding clientele. On a yacht, a satellite broadband service must support sudden spikes in usage – a problem we’ve worked with our partners to address. A key innovation here is our Group Quality of Service feature that enables operators to meet minimum data rates while bursting upward when required, without compromising reliability.

Of course, we continue to see demand in the oil and gas industry as this is a very well established customer base for iDirect, and we have a number of partners that have been very successful servicing this market. There is demand for VSAT not only on the rigs, but also for the supporting vessels. Many of the same issues related to commercial shipping are in play here – crew communications and fleet and vessel management. Like commercial shipping they also need global coverage. We’re working with partners like Intelsat to address that need.

SatMagazine
You recently announced partnerships with Intelsat and Sea Tel to establish global network capabilities. What makes this a novel approach?

David Harrower
We have integrated our technology with Sea Tel’s 9707 global C-band antenna and Intelsat’s Network Broadband Global Maritime service. The goal is to provide the maritime industry and oilfield service providers with universal voice and data connectivity regardless of geographic location or network infrastructure.

The solution features two critical iDirect technologies that allow operators to deploy global networks. The first is Automatic Beam Switching, which enables ships to automatically switch connectivity from one satellite beam to another as they enter a new footprint. The other is our Global Network Management System technology, which assigns each remote with a persistent IP address so that operators can track mobile units anywhere in the world from a single monitoring site.

SatMagazine
David, how do you see the market growing over the next 12 months?

David Harrower
While business opportunities are increasing, there’s a lot of education that needs to be done to mobilize new segments of end users. We’re working with our partners not just on the technology front, but on a broader message to demonstrate how satellite connectivity using VSAT can provide a more cost effective, reliable, higher capacity solution than other communication technologies for the maritime market. We expect demand for satellite broadband to rise sharply as core sectors of the maritime industry quickly expand and modernize. New applications are increasing the demand for high speed connectivity, and we expect this trend to only gain momentum for years to come in the VSAT market

For further details on iDirect’s Maritime activities, select the graphic below...