Tough time for comms
01 Jun 2002
Communications service providers have been having a tough time of it since Iridium filed for Chapter 11 creditor protection and was cut off on March 17, 2000. Both ICO and more recently GlobalStar have followed suit, although all these service providers have now restructured and, with fresh injections of cash, seem to be putting their houses in order.
However, the question that now remains is; can all these new communication systems be supported? In the past, the services have targeted the international businessman who has a need for global communications, but the advances in GSM communications have filled that market in many cases.
New service providers are definitely going to find it tough competing with Iridium, which has basically had its debts written off by the US government. However, the company has not got it all its own way as its service is via low earth orbit satellites, which do not have such a long lifespan as higher orbits and more satellites are needed to provide the same coverage. This means that running costs are higher, something that helped cripple the original Iridium.
The company also has, according to industry sources, a horizon problem. This is caused by too few satellites in the system, which means that as one is going over one horizon, the other is just appearing over the opposite one, considerably increasing the risk of a dropped call. The Iridium element actually has an atomic number of 77, which shows just how many were possibly meant to be in the original system. Perhaps the system should have been called Dysposium ? the element with the atomic number 66 ? but it doesn?t really have the same ring as Iridium.
Another company that has been steadily reducing the number of satellites in its constellation is Teledesic, which has been called the ?Internet-in-the-sky?. The company?s original proposal in 1994 was for 840 satellites in low earth orbit. This was revised to 288 satellites in 1998 after a Boeing led redesign.
The service, which has the backing of Microsoft?s Bill Gates, Craig McCaw and several Saudi princes, has recently, although quietly, announced its latest revision. This involves using 12 satellites at start-up in medium-Earth-orbit, to be followed by another 18, which is quite a coincidence as ICO (or New ICO as it is now called), which Teledesic bailed out from Chapter 11, already has plans for 12 satellites to be operated in medium-Earth-orbit (10 plus two spares).
However, Michael Johnson, New ICO?s global media director, says: "We?re not going to be working together ? we go up a few years ahead of Teledesic and on a different spectrum. We did look at ways to create a synergy between the two systems, but nothing came of it." The companies, both controlled by Eagle River, ran into all kinds of problems ? "It turned into an unworkable but beautiful idea," says Johnson.
Roger Nyhus, a spokesman for Teledesic says: "A combination of factors contributed to the enhanced design ? learning from the experience from others as well as the realities of the financial markets. Building and launching 30 medium-Earth-orbit satellites will cost substantially less than the previous design, while still providing advanced broadband capability around the globe." The big question he says is will people pay for that advanced broadband capacity, or will Teledesic, like Iridium, get overtaken by other technologies? Iridium failed to foresee the giant leaps that were made in GSM technologies in the 1990s ? will the Teledesic system get overtaken by fibre-optic systems and land-based broadband technologies and those of Inmarsat?s next generation satellites? Only time will tell.
New ICO plans to have its system in operation from 2003 and claims that it has utilised innovative transmit and receive antennas allowing direct air link to users. This is coupled with what it describes as a ?smart processor? that is capable of adapting beam configuration to match usage and make the most efficient use of available bandwidth. The company says that its system will support high-quality voice and packet-data services using smaller, lighter and cheaper equipment than its competitors. And, that on full deployment, will access handheld mobile services by using an accessory to adapt a standard mobile phone for satellite communications.
Telenor keeps its options open
Norwegian telecoms company Telenor has formed a new company, Marlink, to focus on the retail side of satellite communication services. Marlink will sell satellite communication services to four target groups: Commercial shipowners/managers, governments (particularly the US), Navies and the fishing industry. It will primarily utilise Telenor?s Inmarsat satellite airtime supply, but says it will also use other airtime suppliers, such as France Telecom, and other system operators, such as Iridium.
On the latter, the company comments that there are some customers ? operating in, for example, polar areas ? that specifically want Iridium. "Our focus is on increasing the portfolio of services available to our customers," explains S?ren Einsh?j, managing director of Marlink. "It is not for us to choose what customers want."
Marlink will also supply traffic accounting services ? largely thanks to the skills acquired through Telenor?s acquisition of SAIT Communications last year ? and hardware, mainly Nera but also Thrane & Thrane, says the company. Marlink says it will also supply other value-added services.
The company says it has about 8,000 vessels within its customer base, of which about 20% are Norwegian or Norwegian-connected. The international fleet includes vessels belonging to Thenamaris, Schiffahrt & Cie and Kuwait Petroleum Corporation.
Commenting on traffic in general, Marlink says that voice is fairly stable and that it is experiencing a slow increase in data. Telex, it says, is more or less gone. Crew call represents about 30% of its total traffic, it estimates.
The company notes the trend among cruise, ferry and offshore industry users to buy vsat solutions for ship-to-shore communications whereby a fixed bandwidth is leased for a fixed fee ? through a supplier such as Telenor?s C-Link ? and all communications thereafter are free of charge. It puts this trend down to the increasing efficiency of vsat solutions.
It believes Inmarsat?s Fleet "will lead the way" as far as future satellite communication usage is concerned. Marlink says a lucrative market is superyachts, where customers have a usage three to four times the average.
Superyacht focus
Another company that has been focussing some of its attention on the superyacht market is Livewire Digital. Tristan Wood, the company?s managing director says it is a lot easier to sell equipment into this sector because some owners are willing to pay any price for new toys. However, the commercial market is a lot tougher and, he agrees with David Johnson, Inmarsat?s director of maritime services, in that owners budget for equipment once ? when the ship is built ? and it takes a lot to convince many owners of the benefits of improved technology.
There are exceptions to this and these are the people driving technology along. The cruise ship sector is one area driving this technology. Livewire Digital has recently introduced a new interface box that allows video conferencing and ISDN-based (64kb/s) computer equipment to be used by ship owners signed up to the Inmarsat B and Inmarsat Fleet F77 satellite communication services.
The Integrated ISDN Unit (IIU) has been designed to accommodate two Inmarsat-B terminals, or an Inmarsat-B and Fleet F77 terminal and, automatically routes data transfers through the cheaper Fleet F77 service before trying the Inmarsat B service. This offers ship owners a highly cost-effective least cost routing option and, ships fitted with the Nera Saturn Bm Satellite terminal can use the equipment to switch between the 9.6kb/s medium speed data service and the 64kb/s high speed data service, avoiding the need to repeatedly reconfigure the terminal. Data hungry users can also couple two Inmarsat terminals together to provide 128kb/s transfer rates for bandwidth hungry applications.
Wood says that the new Integrated ISDN Unit, which has been tried and tested on the Volvo Ocean Race yacht fleet, "Offers an effective least cost routing solution to onboard data communications ? we expect the technology to provide an easy upgrade path for those wanting cost effective high speed data solutions at sea."
Wood says Inmarsat has concentrated on making the system simple to use, something that owners have been pushing for recently. As the need to have a radio operator onboard ship has now gone, there is a considerable need to simplify communications systems. The company, which Wood says works closely with Inmarsat to develop its solutions, has also recently introduced an IP communications gateway that allows ship owners to accurately monitor onboard SMS messaging, email and Internet access via Inmarsat?s Fleet services.
The system fits between the vessels? local area network and the Fleet terminal and allows owners to bill crew in advance, or in arrears on a per-kilobit, or per minute basis. Wood says the system also acts as a highly effective firewall.
He explains: "Crew welfare is a key issue for many shipping companies, particularly on long arduous trips." He adds that the system will enable ship owners to provide crew with vital ship-to-shore contact with their families required to maintain a high level of moral.
However, the question that now remains is; can all these new communication systems be supported? In the past, the services have targeted the international businessman who has a need for global communications, but the advances in GSM communications have filled that market in many cases.
New service providers are definitely going to find it tough competing with Iridium, which has basically had its debts written off by the US government. However, the company has not got it all its own way as its service is via low earth orbit satellites, which do not have such a long lifespan as higher orbits and more satellites are needed to provide the same coverage. This means that running costs are higher, something that helped cripple the original Iridium.
The company also has, according to industry sources, a horizon problem. This is caused by too few satellites in the system, which means that as one is going over one horizon, the other is just appearing over the opposite one, considerably increasing the risk of a dropped call. The Iridium element actually has an atomic number of 77, which shows just how many were possibly meant to be in the original system. Perhaps the system should have been called Dysposium ? the element with the atomic number 66 ? but it doesn?t really have the same ring as Iridium.
Another company that has been steadily reducing the number of satellites in its constellation is Teledesic, which has been called the ?Internet-in-the-sky?. The company?s original proposal in 1994 was for 840 satellites in low earth orbit. This was revised to 288 satellites in 1998 after a Boeing led redesign.
The service, which has the backing of Microsoft?s Bill Gates, Craig McCaw and several Saudi princes, has recently, although quietly, announced its latest revision. This involves using 12 satellites at start-up in medium-Earth-orbit, to be followed by another 18, which is quite a coincidence as ICO (or New ICO as it is now called), which Teledesic bailed out from Chapter 11, already has plans for 12 satellites to be operated in medium-Earth-orbit (10 plus two spares).
However, Michael Johnson, New ICO?s global media director, says: "We?re not going to be working together ? we go up a few years ahead of Teledesic and on a different spectrum. We did look at ways to create a synergy between the two systems, but nothing came of it." The companies, both controlled by Eagle River, ran into all kinds of problems ? "It turned into an unworkable but beautiful idea," says Johnson.
Roger Nyhus, a spokesman for Teledesic says: "A combination of factors contributed to the enhanced design ? learning from the experience from others as well as the realities of the financial markets. Building and launching 30 medium-Earth-orbit satellites will cost substantially less than the previous design, while still providing advanced broadband capability around the globe." The big question he says is will people pay for that advanced broadband capacity, or will Teledesic, like Iridium, get overtaken by other technologies? Iridium failed to foresee the giant leaps that were made in GSM technologies in the 1990s ? will the Teledesic system get overtaken by fibre-optic systems and land-based broadband technologies and those of Inmarsat?s next generation satellites? Only time will tell.
New ICO plans to have its system in operation from 2003 and claims that it has utilised innovative transmit and receive antennas allowing direct air link to users. This is coupled with what it describes as a ?smart processor? that is capable of adapting beam configuration to match usage and make the most efficient use of available bandwidth. The company says that its system will support high-quality voice and packet-data services using smaller, lighter and cheaper equipment than its competitors. And, that on full deployment, will access handheld mobile services by using an accessory to adapt a standard mobile phone for satellite communications.
Telenor keeps its options open
Norwegian telecoms company Telenor has formed a new company, Marlink, to focus on the retail side of satellite communication services. Marlink will sell satellite communication services to four target groups: Commercial shipowners/managers, governments (particularly the US), Navies and the fishing industry. It will primarily utilise Telenor?s Inmarsat satellite airtime supply, but says it will also use other airtime suppliers, such as France Telecom, and other system operators, such as Iridium.
On the latter, the company comments that there are some customers ? operating in, for example, polar areas ? that specifically want Iridium. "Our focus is on increasing the portfolio of services available to our customers," explains S?ren Einsh?j, managing director of Marlink. "It is not for us to choose what customers want."
Marlink will also supply traffic accounting services ? largely thanks to the skills acquired through Telenor?s acquisition of SAIT Communications last year ? and hardware, mainly Nera but also Thrane & Thrane, says the company. Marlink says it will also supply other value-added services.
The company says it has about 8,000 vessels within its customer base, of which about 20% are Norwegian or Norwegian-connected. The international fleet includes vessels belonging to Thenamaris, Schiffahrt & Cie and Kuwait Petroleum Corporation.
Commenting on traffic in general, Marlink says that voice is fairly stable and that it is experiencing a slow increase in data. Telex, it says, is more or less gone. Crew call represents about 30% of its total traffic, it estimates.
The company notes the trend among cruise, ferry and offshore industry users to buy vsat solutions for ship-to-shore communications whereby a fixed bandwidth is leased for a fixed fee ? through a supplier such as Telenor?s C-Link ? and all communications thereafter are free of charge. It puts this trend down to the increasing efficiency of vsat solutions.
It believes Inmarsat?s Fleet "will lead the way" as far as future satellite communication usage is concerned. Marlink says a lucrative market is superyachts, where customers have a usage three to four times the average.
Superyacht focus
Another company that has been focussing some of its attention on the superyacht market is Livewire Digital. Tristan Wood, the company?s managing director says it is a lot easier to sell equipment into this sector because some owners are willing to pay any price for new toys. However, the commercial market is a lot tougher and, he agrees with David Johnson, Inmarsat?s director of maritime services, in that owners budget for equipment once ? when the ship is built ? and it takes a lot to convince many owners of the benefits of improved technology.
There are exceptions to this and these are the people driving technology along. The cruise ship sector is one area driving this technology. Livewire Digital has recently introduced a new interface box that allows video conferencing and ISDN-based (64kb/s) computer equipment to be used by ship owners signed up to the Inmarsat B and Inmarsat Fleet F77 satellite communication services.
The Integrated ISDN Unit (IIU) has been designed to accommodate two Inmarsat-B terminals, or an Inmarsat-B and Fleet F77 terminal and, automatically routes data transfers through the cheaper Fleet F77 service before trying the Inmarsat B service. This offers ship owners a highly cost-effective least cost routing option and, ships fitted with the Nera Saturn Bm Satellite terminal can use the equipment to switch between the 9.6kb/s medium speed data service and the 64kb/s high speed data service, avoiding the need to repeatedly reconfigure the terminal. Data hungry users can also couple two Inmarsat terminals together to provide 128kb/s transfer rates for bandwidth hungry applications.
Wood says that the new Integrated ISDN Unit, which has been tried and tested on the Volvo Ocean Race yacht fleet, "Offers an effective least cost routing solution to onboard data communications ? we expect the technology to provide an easy upgrade path for those wanting cost effective high speed data solutions at sea."
Wood says Inmarsat has concentrated on making the system simple to use, something that owners have been pushing for recently. As the need to have a radio operator onboard ship has now gone, there is a considerable need to simplify communications systems. The company, which Wood says works closely with Inmarsat to develop its solutions, has also recently introduced an IP communications gateway that allows ship owners to accurately monitor onboard SMS messaging, email and Internet access via Inmarsat?s Fleet services.
The system fits between the vessels? local area network and the Fleet terminal and allows owners to bill crew in advance, or in arrears on a per-kilobit, or per minute basis. Wood says the system also acts as a highly effective firewall.
He explains: "Crew welfare is a key issue for many shipping companies, particularly on long arduous trips." He adds that the system will enable ship owners to provide crew with vital ship-to-shore contact with their families required to maintain a high level of moral.
