Case Study: Satcom Giant Inmarsat

 

The maritime industry is a conservative business. It tends to favor the established option over the innovative solution. Inmarsat – the original name in maritime satcom – has managed to compete in a tough market by combining both, leveraging its reputation for reliability to bring a new concept into the mainstream.

In 2024, it debuted a bonded connectivity service, pairing a speedy low-earth-orbit connection with the reliability of its geostationary fleet. This multi-orbit, multi-network service – NexusWave – has revitalized Inmarsat's sales, addressed the risk of new competition and delivered a robust capability that is changing the way shipowners do business on board.

PUBLIC-SERVICE ORIGINS

Inmarsat's mission is rooted in its origins as a safety service for the entire maritime industry.

It all started in the 1960s when the International Maritime Organization realized that the exciting new technology of satellite telecommunication could be used to transmit distress signals and commercial messages. In 1976, IMO member states voted to set up an "efficient and economic" maritime satcom service in order to bring "improvements to the maritime distress and safety systems."

The newly-founded International Maritime Satellite Organization (INMARSAT) would have a neutral, universal mission: It would be maintained "for use by ships of all nations" and governed by a global council.

Inmarsat was officially launched in 1979, and it provided safety communications for shipping throughout the 1980s and 1990s as a government entity. Its distress signaling service became a requirement for many deep-sea vessels with the advent of the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS), and that tradition continues today with its robust Inmarsat C service.

GOING PRIVATE & VIASAT MERGER

In 1999, the IMO voted to spin Inmarsat off as a private company, allowing the enterprise to pursue commercial ventures and access new sources of capital.

As the newly-private "Inmarsat Ltd.," it retained a public safety mission in its charter and began to expand its portfolio with a boost from private investors. Inmarsat helped lead the way into Internet-worthy connectivity at sea with the L-band BGAN service, which is about 10 times faster than dial-up, followed by Fleet Xpress, a modern Ka-band service that approaches cable broadband speeds.

In 2021, after decades of organic growth, Inmarsat agreed to a $7.3 billion acquisition proposal from American satcom giant Viasat, a competing operator of Ka-band geostationary satellites. The merger was finalized in 2023 and combined Inmarsat's history and reputation in maritime with Viasat's technological drive and capacity for investment.

"The result is a culture that's more collaborative, more commercial, and more forward-leaning," says Ben Palmer, former Inmarsat Maritime President and now President, Viasat Commercial.

The combination of the two firms' satellite fleets will augment Inmarsat's services starting next year when the powerful Viasat-3 Flight 2 and Flight 3 satellites will begin delivering massive throughput for the Americas and Asia-Pacific. "Making that high-speed satellite capacity available to our customers is going to give us a real fillip as we go into 2026 and beyond," says Palmer.

BONDED PERFORMANCE

Viasat-3 will underpin the growth of Inmarsat's NexusWave service, layering in a new ultra-fast connection on top of an already-swift product.

Speed is a given with NexusWave, which pulls together bandwidth from OneWeb's LEO constellation, Inmarsat's own Ka-band and near-coastal LTE to handle download rates of up to 340 megabits per second (that's approaching 700 times the speed of the original BGAN service).

What the shipowner does with such a gigantic data pipe is up to them, but they can count on it working. Since the NexusWave bonded layers include two satellite broadband connections together, one can drop out and the ship still has high-speed data. If both drop out, it can still fall back on a reliable L-band service. With all of this redundancy, Inmarsat says that network availability aboard NexusWave-equipped vessels exceeds 99.9 percent, which is better than some big-name fiber Internet services on land.

The idea has been put into practice by others, too. Several third-party satcom distributors have built their own hybrid networks by bundling multi-orbit connectivity with onboard hardware. These arrangements have become common and typically pair SpaceX's fast and affordable Starlink with a "companion" geostationary service for backup.

What sets NexusWave apart is that it's a trusted Inmarsat product with full-service cybersecurity protection and the backing of a 40-year reputation for reliability.

"Trust is everything in this business," says Palmer. "Our customers operate in some of the most demanding environments. They don't just buy connectivity. They buy confidence that their ships, their people and their data are safe. All customer traffic runs through our own global network, which is protected to the same standards trusted by governments, military and aviation users. We manage the entire security layer end-to-end."

SELLING LIKE HOTCAKES

With reliability, cybersecurity and high bandwidth in one package, NexusWave is selling like "hotcakes," Palmer says.

Some analysts were skeptical about the sales outlook for satcom incumbents three years ago when Starlink debuted with unprecedented speed and rock-bottom pricing, but with 2,000+ NexusWave orders and counting, those doubts appear to be gone. If anything, Palmer says, the high performance of LEO satcom services has been good for business: It's acclimated vessel operators to the availability of high-speed data on board. Now that they have it, they want more of it all the time – even when the LEO service is offline. That means more demand for geostationary services too.

"As prices have come down and speeds have increased, data consumption has grown exponentially," says Palmer, "but it hasn't been a simple case of substitution. Customers are not replacing Fleet Xpress with LEO. They're augmenting it. It really is a 'rising tide lifts all boats' scenario."

Part of the demand comes from seafarers, who want continuous high bandwidth to stay in touch with home. The well-known Seafarers Happiness Index finds that connectivity is a "critical lifeline" for crewmembers when available and that shipowner investments in data service are "hugely welcomed" when they arrive on board.

"The next step is ensuring universal, affordable access across all segments because happy, connected crews are safer, more productive and more likely to stay in our industry," Palmer notes.

Bandwidth is at least as valuable to the operator as it is to the crew. With average downtime measured in just minutes per year, Inmarsat's bonded network also provides a foundation for new business infrastructure, adds Palmer. Clients are using it to hoover up more data from the ship and drive fuel-efficiency improvements, saving real money and pursuing their emissions compliance goals. They're also extending the home office's cloud-based applications out to the fleet.

THE "FLOATING OFFICE" & BEYOND

The advent of this "floating office" operating model enables smoother collaboration between ship and shore since both are working from the same digital picture, shared and updated via satellite in real time. But such a high degree of reliance on the satcom connection requires rock-solid reliability, and security to match.

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"The more comfortable shipowners and crews become with high-speed data, the more applications they deploy, the more automation they pursue and the more value they derive from their connectivity," explains Palmer. "In five years, connectivity will simply be expected to work everywhere, seamlessly and securely, just like it does at home, in the office or on the factory floor."

What's next in maritime satcom? It's going to be an industry defined by fully-integrated customer experiences, more value-added services and quite possibly more M&A. "Scale matters more than ever," Palmer says. "The Viasat–Inmarsat combination brought together two complementary strengths to deliver more for customers. I expect we'll see more partnerships aimed at achieving the same goals – resilience, reach and reliability at global scale."