Ship-to-shore communications overview:
Communication requirement in shipping difficult to satisfy

The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-1) built by Boeing Integrated Defence Systems.

Satellite communications are becoming faster and cheaper, but not necessarily fast enough nor cheap enough to persuade ship operators to upgrade from their tried and tested systems. It may be a recognition of this slow take up in a challenging market, that the attention, even for traditional marine communications suppliers like Inmarsat, is broadening to include terrestrial markets.
Indeed it can now be argued that satellite telephony has almost moved beyond market segmentation to become a single global product. Inmarsat is highly interested for instance in moving to supply the non-metropolitan coverage for Third Generation (3G) mobile telephones, thus saving already heavily invested 3G operators even further outlay on a full grid of masts.

Connectivity is the answer
The basic operational structure of the satellite industry has not changed. The capacity of leading satellite operators Inmarsat, Iridium and Intelsat, is largely distributed by “service partners”, third party networking companies, who provide the required levels of connectivity. From this connectivity in turn hangs a raft of programme and specialist service suppliers. There are overlaps between the three areas, as when the satellite operators themselves offer connectivity and software products. The extraordinary range of ship management services that is now available via satellite communications technology, almost puts the ship manager right onto the bridge of every ship he is running.
Over and above simple voice telephony, telex, fax, e-mail and worldwide web access, everything from the ship’s payroll management to the procurement of repairs and spares is available from a sometimes bewildering choice of network suppliers and software solution providers.
The shipping industry of course was not immune to the froth and bubbles of the dot.com boom. There were in particular dozens of start-ups with the ambition to channel much of ship management through a single Internet gateway. Most of these firms disappeared in the crash. Those that remain appear to have learnt the all important lesson that inventing an apparently better mouse-trap, does not have the world beating a path to your door. “The problem with so many of these businesses”, says Eyvind Klewe, IT manager of Iver Ships, “was that they offered the market what they thought that it ought to need, not what it actually wanted”.
Klewe and others point out that a major error behind the would-be single service point suppliers, with their often impressive looking web site home pages, was that they ignored completely, both the inherent conservatism of the industry and its preference to pick and mix suppliers, generally going for best in class.
Though himself the innovative IT chief of an highly innovative chemical shipping company, Klewe happily admits that though its usage continues to decrease, good old fashioned telex still remains one of the key communication media between Iver Ships and its vessels.

Cruise industry in very early
The early adopters of a large chunk of the new satellite delivered services have been the cruise liners. Explains Rachel Devaux-Jeffries of Intelsat’s marine operation: “What we have seen in the last couple of years is the need, especially from cruise ships, for more and more data intensive applications, requiring some of the C and Ku band.
“Its all about the money. The only reason that you adopt something new is that you either make money or save money and the cruise ship industry has found that by being able to offer their passengers Internet e-mail, web access and more voice connectivity, they can charge them more fees.” A profitable refinement of the product is based upon the fact that cruise companies are billed not on time but on the amount of data sent or received. Thus only to small request commands are sent out via the communications satellite, while the much larger quantities of incoming data are downloaded by a much lower cost TV satellite.

VSAT services
Intelsat has been quick into providing its bandwidth intensive VSAT services, which it originally developed for terrestrial corporate management. Ironically Inmarsat was set up to complement Intelsat, the regulators assigned the younger organisation Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) while Intelsat was given Fixed Satellite Services (FSS). Intelsat is not however in breach of its mandate, since the sensitive directional antenna platforms necessary on vessels to capture the small aperture signals, apparently qualify as “fixed”, even though they are being sailed all over the globe.
“The VSAT market has only emerged in the last couple of years”, says Devaux-Jeffries, “so we are still working with our services providers like Schlumberger, Telenor and Veristar to understand what the market needs from us. Is it more than just capacity? What do the service providers want from us so that they can meet the challenges of their market?”
Apart from the cruise industry, the VSAT solution has only been taken up significantly by the offshore oil and gas business, where one of the main applications has been for data logging.
Hard-nosed shipping managers have proved a very different sales proposition to tourists out for a good time.

	Shore-to-ship communications from earth station to ship and master. PHOTO: TELENOR SATELLITE SERVICES

Shipping a tough market
Devaux-Jeffries admits: “The shipping market’s a tough market. Ship owners margins are thin and they are reluctant to adopt new technology unless they have to.” This is borne out by the fact that a not insignificant proportion of Inmarsat’s revenue still comes from the analogue four satellite service Inmarsat-A with which it began its services in 1982. Even though this 20 year old product is now comparatively expensive at USD 10 a minute, it remains in service.
As an analyst points out: “The equipment you needed to use it was expensive and bulky. It may be slow and costly to operate but it works, the investment was written off years ago and owners will need some convincing cost benefit analysis before they abandon it.”
Devaux-Jeffries nevertheless believes that it will only take one or two big ship owners to adopts new VSAT services for the rest of the industry to follow. “Once there is proven efficiency and revenues, then the rest will come along.”
Network solution providers are believed to be trialling VSAT with big fishing operators and a number of ferryboat concerns, where fraud can be minimised by the rapid processing of card transactions using the high capacity satellite link. Inmarsat, with 260,000 installed users remains by far and away the market leader in satellite communications. In November 2001 Inmarsat staked its future on the launch of its Fleet service, which effectively promotes data over telephony and is a marine version of the land mobile Global Area Network service, offering both ISDN compatibility and internet-compatible MPDS packet-switching to deep sea vessels.

ISDN compatibility is next
Though there remain some doubts about the ability of the ISDN-compatible service to deliver the promised 64 kbps speeds, using global rather than spot (VSAT) beams, any problems are likely to be cleared up in some two years time. Then Inmarsat launches its fourth generation satellites, which will allow a fully broad band (B-GAN) service at speeds of up to 432 kbps, covering most land masses and coastal waters.
As Fleet is being hailed as a new industry standard not least because it brings an important dimension to maritime safety, being the only communications standard that meets the latest International Maritime Organisation criteria for systems providing the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System. This new IMO resolution demands that systems should be able to recognise four levels of priority distress, urgency, safety and other communications. Fleet provides voice prioritisation and pre-emption, interrupting standard communications in cases of emergency.
Eyvind Klewe admits that his tests with the package, which had had a difficult development, have left him impressed. He warns however:
“The problem with ‘standard’ programmes is everyone else tries to develop their own standard. We see it with Microsoft wanting to give its own flavour to ‘standard’ applications such as Javascript or XML which lies at the heart of effective, secure Internet links between partner companies, enabling databases to be linked to the web pages.”
But on Klewe’s view the most urgently needed standard is one which ought on paper to be the most simple – standardized forms for messaging. Without this basic organisation, he avers that no communications programme, however powerful, would be all embracing.

	Communication satellite aloft. PHOTO: GLOBE WIRELESS

MDN
Just as Inmarsat A’s analogue system is still going strong after 20 years, so other seemingly fading communications solutions can be burnished and given a new lease of life. In 1998, Globe Wireless launched its Maritime Digital Network (MDN) on High Frequency band. With 25 nodes operating more than 250 channels with overlapping cells, rather like those of a mobile telephone network, the MDN offers global coverage every minute of the year, for a mere fraction of the investment necessary to build, launch and maintain a satellite network. Because the system is digital, security via encryption is straightforward, as is the compression of messages for faster transmission. Globe research shows that more than 90 per cent of the maritime messages passed over its MDN are small messages of less than two kilobytes and e-mail far and away exceeds voice.
An unexpected benefit of MDN availability came in New York after the World Trade Centre attacks. Satellite-equipped ships that urgently needed to contact their owners for instructions, found the system crowded out. By contrast MDN users had relatively clear air waves. What had once been considered obsolete came back into its own and Globe Wireless had been signing up customers at the rate of 80 vessels a month, taking the total number of ships to nearly 4,000. The firm’s managers do not see their product as being in direct competition with satellite communications, but stress that shipowners or managers need the right blend of communications. The company has maintained that it is becoming increasingly common for Globe shipowners to use the MDN as their primary communications system, with Inmarsat or another satellite provider as back-up.
Such pick and mix is far more in keeping with the industry’s traditional approach to purchases. However as the number of service providers shrinks, so may the purchase options. Norway’s Telenor has bought Comsat Mobile from Lockheed Martin and combined it with Telenor Satellite Mobile to form Telenor Satellite Services. Likewise Xantic bought the satellite assets of Australian telecoms provider Telstra in 2000 and last year went on to purchase Spectec. With its Amos brand of onboard ship management systems optimised for satellite communications Xantic is both a network provider and a software solutions firm.

Further consolidation
Recessionary pressures are likely to oblige further consolidation and as soon as an upturn appears real, aggressive takeovers would seem logical, giving a tighter market with a smaller range of products. A few specialisations such as telemedicine may resist consolidation. It was established first for the US cruise industry where a mere ship’s doctor was never going to be up to dealing with every highly litigious patient. It has since spread its market to ferry boats where its availability ameliorates rising insurance premiums. Using the video hardware, top specialists can examine patients and direct treatment from their own desks anywhere else in the world.

Nigel Ash

Tillbaka till SSG 9, October 18

Latest update 18-10-2006 8:49

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