Ship Equip VSAT customers use 19.7 Gigabytes per month

-          We have seen this trend for a long time, Fleet Manager Frank Bjoernsen says. A few years ago customers were more cautious and only deployed  a small number of PCs when the SEVSAT satellite communication was installed. One in the wheelhouse, one in the machine room and maybe one in the mess. This has changed for a number of reasons. Many customers are installing WiFi networks and allow a higher number of PCs on board, both for operational and personal use. One reason is they have deployed on-board IT systems that require to be online with the land office. Problem solving by sending pictures of damaged equipment to vendors has become a popular way of getting acceptance of the problem and a quick response from the suppliers. Others file applications for port access and complete procedures to comply with environmental requirements before entering restricted waters. To ensure bandwidth for operational use the networks can be split in an operational and a crew network with separate bandwidth allocations.

 

-          The initial caution was due to their previous experience with pay by the Megabyte type solutions that quickly could accumulate a high communications bill Mr Bjoernsen says. Now they experience that the SEVSAT bill stays close to fixed, only varying slightly according to telephone usage, which with rates starting at 0.08 USD does not add a lot to the fixed bill. Besides, a lot of ships have limited the telephone to operational use and letting the crew pay for the their personal use through the Prepaid Crew Calling solution from Ship Equip. That way the monthly cost for all practical purposes stays within a narrow window Bjoernsen adds.

 

-          When you look at the figures in detail the ships are really not paying much for what they get with SEVSAT: At 19.7 GigaByte and a typical monthly bill of USD 3500 the price per MB corresponds to paying the very low 0.175 USD or seventeen and a half cent and that is including rental of the entire system. Although we see a shift towards 256 Kb/s and have a number of contracts that go into the Megabits, the largest proportion of our customers have the 128Kb/s-128 Kb/s contract and still communicate 10 - 15 GB per month. So the growth in data transmission volumes are not attributed to high bandwidth users raising the average Mr Bjoernsen states.

 

-          With the higher usage we have added capacity to our networks Bjoernsen continues: We monitor bandwidth usage and when the utilization reaches 70% within a segment of ships using SEVSAT satellite broadband we add more bandwidth to always have a margin for growth and to handle peaks. After all we want to make sure customers get what they are paying for he concludes.