TECHNOLOGY
in radomes with reportedly little effect on performance. This, however, directly invalidates the Starlink warranty and there is a specific clause to cover this.
OneWeb’s maritime hardware will have two options from April next year as both Intellian and Kymeta have targeted the release of their systems to be in time for OneWeb’s Mediterranean service launch in May 2023. At a predicted price point of $20,000, Intellian’s single terminal, dual antenna system will provide tried and tested marinized performance. The competitive pricing, compared to standard VSAT hardware, has been achieved by Intellian’s use of cell phone chip sets and not requiring a block upconverter which typically can cost around $6,000 per antenna.
The Kymeta u8 is a single aperture flat panel antenna that, in recent tests in Toulouse, France, achieved throughput in excess of 200Mbps down and 40Mbps up which is sufficient to deliver OneWeb’s proposed data plans. The tests apparently delivered a satisfactory beam and satellite handover experience, however more than one antenna is required for seamless handover.
Installation quality is always important, not just for the antennas and BDE but also for the onboard network, and this is clearly demonstrated by the varying speed tests posted on the Starlink support forums. If local network hardware is old or network traffic isn’t managed effectively, then the high speeds delivered at the router by the satellite network will not be seen on the LAN or indeed the customers device, and perceived performance and value for money will be lower.
The recent acquisition of OneWeb by Eutelsat promises the potential to blend OneWeb’s LEO constellation with Eutelsat’s 36 satellite GEO constellation, which is also Ku band. This will be a very powerful combination to provide redundant, resilient, ultrafast services and give the operator the choice to offer a fixed price.
Starlink can’t offer this, however, the resellers have options that can include secondary VSAT services and the success of this will be down to how this can be charged for. You don’t want to pay for a VSAT service while you are using Starlink, but with the reseller handling the failover between services it should be possible to select a package that will meet the end users’ needs and offer best commercial value. The onboard hardware is very different
between the two systems and we will see more of this as new providers come to market, O3bMpower and All Space spring to mind. Starlink’s proprietary maritime system comprises of two independent systems with no interconnectivity, so bonding, failover or aggregation must be performed separately. Many early adopters have decided to further protect the antennas by mounting them
Starlink have set their prices and
as expected the maritime pricing reflects the cost of providing mobile bandwidth.
Starlink have set their prices and the maritime pricing reflects the cost of providing mobile bandwidth. Their MIR only, one size fits all approach is very competitive compared to standard VSAT, but it remains to be seen how they will compete with the upcoming LEO services. OneWeb maritime plans are expected to be published early in 2023 but we already know that OneWeb will offer a ‘simple but flexible’ range of options from 10/2 Mbps to 200/20 Mbps with CIR, plus data allowances from 100Gb to unlimited, and can include suspension periods.
We expect continued disruption at every level and from 2024 onwards we will be able to add IRIS2, Kuiper, Lightspeed, O3bMpower and others into this rapidly evolving conversation. But to meet the demanding requirements of a superyacht I know what I would choose right now.
ONBOARD | WINTER 2023 | 83
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