So You Think You Want To Go With VSAT Now What?

Choosing a provider, equipment checklist and installation costs…

By Patricia Keefe

Making the decision to go with broadband VSAT is the easy part. You’ll never look better to the big boss, saving a ton of money in these economically crunched times. The hard part is sifting through the small armada of possible service providers and their various software options, trying to find the right technology partner for your better connected future.

According to UK-based Satellite consultancy Comsys (www.comsys.co.uk), first and foremost, users need to find out who the major service providers are, and who has the most experience. “Experience counts for a lot,” says Comsys senior consultant Simon Bull. In Comsys’ May 2008 Maritime VSAT report (http://www.comsys.co.uk/vm1e_mn.htm), “One of the things we highlighted, was going back three to five years when looking at providers,” he says.

There are now a hundred or more maritime VSAT service providers on hand, according to Bull, who cautions that VSAT “is not backyard-type technology, and it’s very complex to get right.” He described the difference between the L band technology provided through companies involved in the Inmarsat service, and broadband C or KU-band VSAT, as the difference between building a bike and a car. “You need to look for someone who can demonstrate effectively that they know what they are doing, someone who has a real history and experience. There are plenty of companies with zero history, who offer a wing and a prayer and a good web site.”

Customers also need to look at service and maintenance. “Where is the ship going to go, and how is that service provider going to fix problems as they happen?,” he says, and equally important, where they happen. “If your boat has a problem with its antenna, and you happen to be in Chile, will there be anyone in Chile who understands how to fix it? If you buy a cheap antenna from Korea or China, and you want it serviced, you’re stuffed,” he claims. “If that boat is in Chile and it has to go to Africa, it’s going to be a long time without communications.”

According to Michael Finnerty, a project manager with Global Marine Systems who manages the VSAT program, when the sub-sea cable repair company went looking for a service provider, it did so with a list of “wants” in hand, including:

• Total control of the connection – “Some service providers will only let you link to certain things – we wanted control of that. We also wanted to run our own VPN [virtual private network] through it.”
• 24-hour, worldwide support – “We wanted a company with engineers worldwide capable of fixing anything that went wrong.”
• Flexibility in the service offering – For example, Finnerty notes that when the company had a vessel in port for two to three months, it wanted the flexibility of not having to pay the full service fee for a system it would not be using. “We notify them, they reduce the bandwidth, and we pay less. It’s a 50% reduction,” he says.
• To go where they wanted to go – You might think this would send the company to a more global C band system. When that turned out to be rather expensive, they looked at the more regional, narrower Ku band, but it can have gaps in service between satellite footprints. MTN, however, offered a kind of roaming deal, built around iDirect’s automatic beam switching, to automatically jump the ship from satellite footprint to satellite footprint. “We had a vessel in Bermuda. We put the installation on that vessel and a month later laid cable across the pacific in China, Now we’re in China. If we were not allowed to go between bands, we’d be stuck in a contract with a system we could not use.’’

Regardless of which bandwidth system users choose, each vessel will need the following equipment, according to SeaMobile MTN, Global Marine’s service provider:

• Above deck equipment: The major decision (and cost) is antenna band and size. Antenna bands are C- or Ku-band. What size antenna is most often dictated by size of vessel, on-deck space and the signal strength required.
• Below deck equipment: Satellite broadband router or modem; antenna control unit; and a voice gateway

The above are not usually purchased as stand-alone equipment, but bundled into the service plan. They can be purchased or leased from a service provider.

Above deck installation costs, according to Global Marine, run about $20,000, but can vary pending depending on the type of installation, for example, pedestal size, height, and how much the crane cost. The antennas comprised the main cost. Another factor is whether the user leases or purchases the equipment. Global Marine exercises both options Yet a third factor is the time in port to actually install the equipment. The best case scenario, according to Finnerty, is about four weeks to order, deliver and install the complete system. The below deck equipment, which in MTN’s case utilizes the iDirect model, is included in the monthly service fee. - MarEx