GVF-EMP are staging the latest in their conference series with ‘Maritime Insights Europe 2013: GVF Broadband Maritime Offshore & Oceanic—Networking towards a high throughput space’, to take place on 25th & 26th June at the Strand Palace Hotel, London, United Kingdom.
The conference will address both the extent of, and the key drivers of, maritime communications growth. According to the 3rd Edition of the COMSYS Maritime VSAT Report (© Comsys) (www.comsys.co.uk), the size and scope of the maritime VSAT market can be characterized as near-1.2 million vessels of all types that could theoretically be connected by satellite services. Subtracting the small yacht market, the almost 150,000 vessels which remain represent the core opportunity of which over 25 per cent are actual or near-term potential customers for VSAT companies. Concomitantly, the number of operators deploying stabilised antenna systems has risen from a handful of highly specialised companies to more than 140 service providers across the world positioned to provide some form of VSAT service to the maritime sector.
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The conference program follows the Partnership’s recent events in Washington DC—the High Throughput Satellites Roundtable—plus the Rio de Janeiro and Aberdeen conferences from the Oil & Gas Communications Series. This 9th Conference in the Broadband Maritime Series is being held with the support of Inmarsat, Intelsat, Telenor Satellite Broadcasting, and Comtech EF Data, and in association with InterManager, the International Shipping Management Association.
Additionally, the conference program will, as with the other series encompassing either vertical market or horizontal market perspectives, feature dialogue reflecting the specific impact on broadband communications networking of high capacity satellite connectivity over high throughput satellite (HTS) systems. In the new HTS technology and service paradigm, for example, maritime operators are today implementing innovative high capacity satellite-wireless hybrid architectures to reduce costs and improve performance for their various customer segments on the high-seas.
Martin Jarrold, Chief of International Programme Development with GVF, and Conference Chairman, commented, “For millions of varied corporate, enterprise, (and consumer) end-users this new HTS paradigm offers CAPEX and OPEX rates that are transforming the broadband value proposition from both geosynchronous satellite (GEO) and medium Earth orbit satellite (MEO) orbital positioning, and this is of paramount importance on the seas of the world, which remain vital for our natural resource exploitation, for much of our food and energy supplies, for the transportation of our globalised trade goods, and for many of our leisure pursuits.”
Paul Stahl – Managing Partner of EMP – added, “Our ability to communicate effectively whilst on even the remotest regions of the oceans is paramount, and now goes beyond only, or simply, the means to improve the safety of seafarers and their vessels – the key consideration associated with the first maritime satellite communications networks – and naturally of continuing utmost importance.”
As of the date of this release the companies which will be contributing to the conference programme is anticipated to include (in alphabetical order) Advantech Wireless; Astrium Services; Cobham SATCOM; Comtech EF Data; Euroconsult; Eutelsat; GD SatCom; Gilat Satellite Networks; Inmarsat; Intelsat; NSR; Orange Business Services; SES; Signalhorn; Teledyne Paradise Datacom; Telenor Satellite Broadcasting; and, ViaSat, together with end-user representatives from the membership of InterManager.
The London event is set against an historical backdrop wherein for many years the technologies and services enabling communication at sea were expensive. The practical use of relatively high-cost, and limited, bandwidth was of quite restricted application, and certainly not ideally suited to the facilitation of vessel-at-sea integration with corporate networks, enabling vessels effectively to become functional remote offices, with satellite communications infrastructures and applications being extended to allow the expansion of the ship’s captain’s role to that remote office manager. This extension of access to the rest of ships’ crews has also allowed personnel to both expand the scope and reach of their maritime training, and use the advantages of the Internet and Social Media to remain in contact with home.
Now, the satellite communications industry continues to accelerate its transition to new technology deployments and service delivery models, wherein a broader range of segments of the maritime industry are able to leverage the advantages of very small aperture-based (VSAT-based) communications, in addition to the traditional usage of demand assigned, pay-per-megabyte, services in the L band of Mobile Satellite Service (MSS).
Commenting further, Martin Jarrold said, “The maritime communications environment will continue to progress from its former wholly narrowband communications axis, into the broadband age, employing stabilised antenna systems to access Fixed Satellite Service (FSS) in the C, Ku, and increasingly, Ka bands of the satellite frequency spectrum, as well as tracking antenna systems to access the very soon to be launched high throughput satellite constellation operating in MEO, i.e., O3b.”
Early maritime VSAT, i.e, high-cost Single Channel per Carrier (SCPC) technology (requiring dedicated bandwidth for each vessel), actually made VSAT more expensive than L Band, but with Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) VSAT networks, the horizon for maritime satellite communications has changed completely. TDMA offers service comparable to SCPC networks but by sharing and segmenting bandwidth across vessels, high speed, always-on, flat-rate VSAT, is a now wholly-realised practical reality for the broad sweep of the maritime industry.
The broad scope of this latest Maritime Insights/Broadband Maritime conference from GVF-EMP includes the following segments of the maritime vessel market: the Merchant segment, the Passenger segment, the Ocean Resource segment, and the Leisure segment. For the purposes of this conference these segments, and the satellite-based communications applications requirements associated with them, are defined as follows.
—The Merchant segment includes tankers for crude oil, its refined derivatives, as well as LNG; container vessels; bulk carriers; oil & gas field maintenance & supply vessels; and cable/fibre/pipeline laying vessels. High demand communications applications in this segment include: remote Internet & corporate intranet access; email & webmail, large file transfers; SMS text & instant messaging; video conferencing; store & forward video; real-time navigation & weather updates; Global Maritime Distress Safety System (GMDSS); crew welfare communications; corporate secure communications;
vessel & engine telemetry; cargo monitoring & telemetry; and, telemedicine.
—The Passenger segment principally refers to point-to-point vehicle & passenger ferries and shares many of the above listed applications, plus that of cellular/mobile backhaul and trunking.
—The Ocean Resource segment – which includes inshore fishing trawlers, and their offshore and deep-water equivalents and factory ships, as well as deep-water floating and semi-submersible oil & gas platforms – typically features applications such as telephony; email & Internet access; crew welfare communications; telemedicine; real-time navigation, position reporting & weather updates; GMDSS; sea/ocean floor depth mapping; market information (e.g. fish market price downloads & selling catch online); tracking applications (e.g. fish finding); updating electronic logs.
—The Leisure segment – covering ocean-going cruise liners, ocean-going private leisure craft, and inshore leisure craft – communications requirement includes such key applications as: maintenance of 24/7 business communications via telephony, email, fax, Internet, cellular backhaul and trunking, and video conferencing, as well as credit card verification and ATM support, plus real-time weather & navigation updates, GMDSS, and ship-to-shore advance repairs booking & supplies orders.
Topics to be covered using a combination of presentation and question & answer sessions, and interactive mini-panel sessions, at the two-day London conference will include:
—Maritime Communications: Identifying, Understanding and Leveraging the Sector’s Essential Dynamics
—The Maritime Sector & Communications Provision Interface: Who Wants What and Where? Who Provides What & Where?
—The Satellite Operator & Network Provider: Maritime Deployment of New Global Broadband Resources
—Evolving the “Unlimited Broadband” Bandwidth Equation: High Throughput Satellites & New Evolutionary Trends in C, Ku, Ka, and L Frequency Footprints for the Maritime Space
—New Satellite Operator Dynamics for the High Seas: The High Throughput Evolution
—Maritime ICT & Business Solutions: eBusiness Strategy & Implementation Afloat
—The Ocean-Going Office on the Bridge: Integrating Operational Ship Management Applications & Communications
—The ICT Seascape for Ships’ Crews: The Internet & Social Media Expectation
—The Communications Key to Efficient Fleet Management in the 21st Century: From Vessel Chartering to Capturing & Sharing Data Ship-to-Shore
—VSATs at Sea & Designing Dedicated Targeted Solutions for Multiple Parameters: The Vessel Type, Company Type, Data Volumes, and Crew Requirement
—Cloud Computing over the Ocean: Maritime Industry Satellite Networking
—Satellite Networking & Expanding Maritime Communications for an Arctic Horizon
—Regulatory & Licensing Open Forum – Communications Inshore & on the High Seas: Who Makes the Rules? Who Enforces the Rules?
—New Maritime Antenna Technologies: The Multi-Band Challenge in a Stabilised Market
—Evolution of Maritime Satcoms Services & Equipment: Technical Innovation for an Expanding Market
—Charting the Latest Course: The Satellite Navigation and Satellite Communications Interface
—Safety, Distress & Piracy: GMDSS from MSS to FSS to HTS?
—Weather Data Streams: Real-time Access & Dissemination of Local, Regional & Global Information
—High-Seas Networking Solutions: Systems Resilience Profiles & the HTS Evolution
