KEEPING CONNECTED
ONBOARD talks to Simon Pearce about the disruptors in 2022 within the satellite and communications arena and what we can expect in the coming years
A
year ago, I talked about the upcoming disruption of the VSAT services due to the imminent introduction of Starlink, closely
followed by OneWeb, and 2022 certainly hasn’t disappointed. Even in the wake of COVID disruption, Starlink have managed to launch their service covering much of the world. OneWeb, even with the last- minute move from Russia to India and even SpaceX for launch services, are back on track to launch their maritime service fully in 2023. The disruption has affected, and will continue to affect, every level of the industry from satellite design through terminal hardware to customer experience, not least of which is because Elon Musk has been driving much of it.
Early Starlink adopters have been using the RV version on board yachts with some considerable success, but as predicted, Starlink have now released their maritime version with hardware costs of $10,000 and a monthly subscription of $5,000 (matrixed satellite laser links to ‘land’ traffic come at a price). This has a fair use policy (FUP) which will start in February 2023 and restricts customers that exceed 1TB per month in peak hours, 7am to 11pm, to ‘Basic Access’.
Early adopters that are sticking with the $99 RV version are now being restricted to land based, non-mobile use, although the geofences are not completed in every region as yet and service can be unpredictable as yachts move away from the shoreline. It may be that some yachts that have installed the RV version will simply
accept the geographical limitations of the service and replace their 4G system due to the low cost and high performance of Starlink and use existing VSAT services as they venture into international waters. One thing is for sure, Starlink’s box shifting model, which has achieved >500,000 users already, does lack customer support, and various Facebook groups have become the go-to for end users to get advice, the quality of which can vary immensely.
Established resellers that service the Superyacht AV/IT sector can only purchase the equipment and service from Starlink at the same price as an end user, which, on the face of it doesn’t appear to be a good option for them, until you look at the value-added services and support that they can provide as a revenue stream to meet the demanding requirements of the superyacht sector. That said, Starlink doesn’t provide API access to allow resellers to be able to trouble shoot and provide remote support and advice and failing hardware will need to be swapped out rather than repaired.
THE DISRUPTION WILL CONTINUE TO AFFECT EVERY LEVEL
FROM SATELLITE DESIGN THROUGH TO CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
OneWeb, on the other hand, have ensured that API access is readily available to enable full support throughout the reseller channel. OneWeb’s model is wholesale and will therefore only be available via resellers who can also advise on secondary connectivity as well as onboard networks (existing network hardware that has supported 10Mbps links may well not cope with 200Mbps!), remote ETO services, automatic and remote power management, cyber, monitoring and IoT.
With the general shift to Cloud services, connectivity is becoming even more critical and the low latency of the LEO constellations makes them very favourable as primary services, but it’s widely accepted that Starlink’s maritime service will generally require a VSAT service to ensure seamless reliability to end users, partly due to the lack of guaranteed bandwidth (CIR) and partly due to lack of direct support, except via resellers and it’s simply not worth their reputation to provide a best effort service, unsupported. OneWeb’s CIR goes a long way to ensuring that end users won’t be left with patchy or no connection.
82 | WINTER 2023 | ONBOARD
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