Floating Offices

 

Connectivity might be the fastest-changing part of the shipping industry.

Just a decade ago, most ships dropped out of digital contact when they sailed over the horizon, and high-speed Internet access had to wait until the next port call. Today, the majority of the fleet has VSAT connectivity, and shipowners are sprinting towards full-scale broadband. An estimated 7,000 ships already have speedy low earth orbit (LEO) terminals installed, and more than 40 percent of owners plan to add a LEO service within a year, according to the British consultancy Thetius.

The sudden increase in bandwidth is giving seafarers more frequent access to video calls and entertainment, improving morale, recruitment and retention. Bandwidth also enables “big data” analytics and optimization, empowering shoreside managers with a real-time understanding of what the ship and its equipment are doing.

In years to come, broadband may gradually turn each ship into a “floating office” – a digital extension of the operating company, running on shared cloud-based software. But to get marine-grade reliability and speed, it isn’t as simple as just putting a new white antenna on the top of the wheelhouse, as owners are finding out.

Game-Changer

Satcom insiders readily admit that SpaceX’s Starlink service is driving the biggest changes. The high-bandwidth, low earth orbit (LEO) network delivers cable-like data to most locations on Earth, and at a highly competitive price.

SpaceX has sold thousands of its flat-panel Starlink terminals to maritime customers and is getting great reviews, especially from crewmembers. The service has made it possible to offer seafarers a much better connection with shoreside society – and with the home office.

The market is full of speculation about what this game-changing product will mean for incumbent satcom companies. So far, it seems just fine for everyone, including the managed service providers and the satellite fleet operators. Once shipowners and seafarers experience high-bandwidth connectivity, they appear to want more, even in the areas that Starlink doesn't yet cover.

More supply has simply created higher expectations and more demand.

"We see an increasing interest in moving all the ship's applications to the cloud,” says Marco Cristoforo Camporeale, Vice President for Strategy at Inmarsat, a division of Viasat. “As we get there, these applications will need more and more connectivity. But we also see more demand from the crew. Now that the crew has gotten used to doing video calls with the family and streaming more video content, they will demand more and more. It’s been the same trend in residential: The more data you get, the more applications you use, and the more data you want."

Though it’s a “global” service, Starlink doesn't work in some foreign nations, and some users report temporary drop-offs on deep-sea routes. Ships need a proven backup service for business and operations, as well as for GMDSS distress communications requirements, so they have to have something more than just Starlink alone.

Crewmembers who have grown used to broadband Internet want to keep using video-call services all the time, particularly when they get to China, where Starlink shuts off near the coast. (This regional outage bothers enough people that the global Seafarers Happiness Index survey lists it as a significant industry morale issue.)

Hybrid Networks

Luckily, shipowners can use more than one service at a time. It's getting easier to design a good combination thanks to a thriving market for "hybrid" solutions that link together multiple terminals on board the ship. The right hybrid configuration yields a nice balance of speed, uptime and cost, and can be set up to adapt to conditions on the fly – even if one satellite connection goes down.

"With hybrid connectivity, it’s about layers of redundancy and resiliency to ensure a consistent and reliable connection," explains Richard Beecham, Senior Director, Global Partnerships & Strategic Development at Intellian.

Hybrid networks come in several flavors: bonded or switched, vendor-managed or DIY.

Bonded networks stack together two or more data connections at the same time, dividing the load between them. That means more available bandwidth. "You're actually layering capability and feeding the throughput optimally through the pipe that best suits it,” says Ben Palmer, President of Inmarsat Maritime. “The ability to stack additional layers on top means capacity can expand as demand increases."

Bonded hybrid networking works best when joining together two connections that have about the same lag time, notes Chris Watson, Vice President of Marketing & Communications at KVH, the maker of the new CommBox Edge hybrid networking device. 5G/LTE services pair well with Starlink since they have about the same latency. The operator can also assign different applications to different satellite services, depending on the priority of the usage.

For example, all crew welfare data could be routed via the ship’s Starlink terminal, and all business and operations data could go over a reliable VSAT service. The best configuration is vessel-specific, and a switched hybrid network – which can only select one connection at a time – could be a more cost-effective option for some operators. "How important bonding is for vessel operators really comes down to how they use connectivity onboard and budget," says Intellian's Beecham.

To build a hybrid network, vessel operators need multiple terminals and may also want terminals that can do multiple jobs. "A single multi-constellation antenna is on the wish list for many, and we’ve seen that requirement grow over the past few years," Beecham adds. Intellian developed the world’s first electronically switching VSAT antennas, which allow the operator to connect to a Ku-band service (like Intelsat’s FlexMaritime) or Ka-band (like Inmarsat’s Fleet Xpress) without any physical changes to the antenna.

Oceangoing ships have to have a GMDSS solution, too, like Cobham’s Sailor 4300 terminal for the Iridium network – a solid-state, all-weather auxiliary to complement satellite broadband services.

Intelsat, the leading maritime VSAT provider, has also come up with a switchable system to meet operators' demands for higher bandwidth. Its newly-minted Vantage service delivers faster download speeds of up to 60 Mbps at a premium cost per gigabyte. When operators want to use a cheaper connection, they can switch on the fly to use the 20 Mbps FlexMaritime service – a reliable industry stalwart used by 14,000 vessels around the world. Both run on the same Ku-band antenna, using two modems and a newly-designed switching unit.

There's still plenty of room in the market for a Ku-band service like Vantage, says Mike McNally, Director of Maritime at Intelsat. "Most of our sales partners are still growing with us,” he explains. “In many cases, they refer to our service as the ‘companion service’ because even when ships are starting to rely on higher capacity services, they absolutely need to have a high-quality service with 99.999% uptime."

Managed Service Providers

Large shipowners with in-house IT departments often have the technical know-how to set up hybrid networks on their own, but smaller companies may find it easier to pick a vendor-managed solution.

Fully-managed hybrid networks – like Sealink NextGen by Marlink, Inmarsat's NexusWave or KVH One – can give shipowners of all sizes the ability to access this kind of connectivity, and there are lots of choices. "Managed service providers are the brains behind customers getting up and running with a hybrid multi-antenna network," says Intellian's Beecham.

A managed hybrid package is often bundled with bandwidth management and data traffic analysis tools like AST's Integra Control.

Modern shipboard networks have to deal with lots of crew-owned personal devices and encrypted applications, which can eat up bandwidth and open doors for hackers. Integra Control gives shipowners the ability to limit data for each type of application and control access at the shoreside connection point between the ship's satellite service and the rest of the Internet – a useful security feature.

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity monitoring might be the most important option in a managed service package.

As soon as a merchant ship is hooked up to broadband, it’s no longer "air-gapped," and quality cyber protection is essential. With more connectivity, more applications and more devices on board, there are more potential entry points for malicious actors. Hackers have discovered the maritime industry, and the volume of detected cyberattack attempts has soared over the past year, according to managed service provider Marlink. To fight back, Marlink bought two cybersecurity consultancies and now has 130 professionals providing network security for thousands of vessels around the world.

"There are a number of reasons why we want to make sure we secure the ship when it gets a bigger data pipeline like Starlink,” says Tore Morten Olsen, President of Maritime at Marlink. “Our cyber operating center sees a lot of government-backed hackers trying to penetrate ships. We've also seen examples of hackers that have changed shipment cargo manifests to smuggle illegal substances. Shipowners really need to have a cyber solution that's more managed than just a box on board. That's why we’re investing heavily in that area because we want to take our maritime expertise and apply diligent cyber competence to create optimal solutions for all the vessels floating out there." 

Paul Benecki is the magazine’s News Editor.