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By Paul Benecki 2019-06-19 16:22:00
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As connectivity at sea becomes more common, opportunities for new applications and business models are proliferating. Nor-Shipping 2019 showcased an increasingly competitive market for ship data services, with half a dozen vendors offering comprehensive platforms for transmission, storage and analysis. Many of these firms are from adjacent spaces, and their new services are bundled in ways that overlap traditional industry lines. It appears that previous forecasts for single-vendor, all-inclusive data services – VSAT packaged with e-navigation, cybersecurity, IoT, cloud services, vessel performance management and remote monitoring – are coming closer to reality.
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More satcom options
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A new wave of communications satellite operators will enter into service in the next few years, bringing more competition to the maritime broadband market. Newcomers Starlink and OneWeb are building low earth orbit and medium earth orbit (LEO / MEO) networks to compete with the existing geostationary orbit (GEO) constellations operated by Intelsat, JSAT and Inmarsat.
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According to Frank August, director of maritime for OneWeb, the new low earth orbit satellite constellations aren’t necessarily going to disrupt the satcom market; rather, they will give shipowners an additional option for high speed connectivity to augment existing coverage. OneWeb is planning to distribute through the same retail satcom providers which have always served the maritime industry, keeping existing sales and service channels intact.
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LEO satcom services will have lots of bandwidth, but they will also have low latency: as the satellites are in a lower orbit, it takes less time for a signal to reach the satellite. This matters for videoconferencing and web browsing, where long time gaps degrade the user experience. For any future autonomous or remotely-controlled vessels, lower latency also means safety, since there is a shorter delay in the information flow between the ship and shoreside control.
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Marlink, the leading retailer of satcom services for the maritime industry, doesn’t expect its business to be disrupted by the new constellation operators. According to Tore Morten Olsen, Marlink’s president of maritime, the demand for high-bandwidth service is only going to rise as cost per megabyte goes down – especially for crew welfare uses. “Once crewmembers experience a few months aboard a vessel with fast internet, they don’t want to go back,” Olsen says. “Ship managers are finding that they need to have broadband service in order to retain their best seafarers.”
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Intellian, which makes satcom terminals for broadband services, doesn’t expect disruption either. It is already working with OneWeb on antenna designs, and its next generation of terminals can all be modified to work with future LEO satellite constellations. “All of our products moving forward have the capability of being Ku-band / Ka-band frequency agnostic as well as constellation agnostic, whether it’s a fixed geostationary satellite or a LEO or MEO moving satellite,” says Intellian VP of marketing Paul Comyns. “That secures future-proof capability for all purchasers, so they know that the antenna that is going on board tomorrow can be converted later when the new constellations come online.”
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Using a LEO service will require having two antennas on board – one to track the next moving satellite as the one in the ship’s view passes towards the horizon – but according to OneWeb’s Frank August, demand for the terminals will be high enough to create economies of scale in manufacturing (and a lower price per terminal).
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Value-added services
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As VSAT becomes commoditized, the service bundle – whether for crew welfare, ship data, cybersecurity or other purposes – is an important way for each satcom provider to differentiate itself from the competition. As a recent example, Inmarsat has added a new IoT package called Fleet Data, a service that allows data from onboard sensor applications to be sent over dedicated bandwidth; it comes bundled with cloud-based data storage and data analysis tools for the ship manager.
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Satcom operators are also finding new, nontraditional customers by segregating bandwidth and billing. Both Inmarsat and KVH are creating service packages that enable OEMs to remotely monitor shipboard equipment without charging the ship operator for the connectivity. With these services, the OEM uses a satcom connection to get sensor data from the engine, boiler, scrubber or any other equipment they’ve installed on the ship; the OEM, not the shipowner, pays for the bandwidth used. KVH’s service, KVH Watch, comes with its own dedicated satcom terminal.
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A regular data stream could help OEMs sort through warranty and service issues, but it could also open up new business models for equipment ownership. Inmarsat foresees a future in which OEMs could keep such close tabs on engines and other mission-critical gear that they could offer uptime as a service, much as Rolls Royce offers “power as a service” for jet turbine engines. The shipowner would pay the OEM by the hour for the machine’s operation, and the OEM would own it and service it. Inmarsat is trialing the underlying technology with Hyundai Heavy Industries’ service division, Hyundai Global Service (HGS), providing digital IoT monitoring for three ships using dedicated bandwidth. Since Hyundai Group supplies machinery for HHI newbuilds, onboard equipment monitoring dovetails well with Hyundai’s broader business, according to Ronald Spithout, President, Inmarsat Maritime.
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IoT goes big
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Just about every major marine electronics vendor is looking to offer a common platform for ship data collection, storage and analysis. Last week, Kongsberg announced Kognifai Vessel Insight, a package is designed to make it as easy as possible to get IoT data off the ship. A single crew-installed box collects information and transfers it to the satellite terminal (or, through a new partnership, to a KVH Watch dedicated IoT terminal), which sends it to a cloud storage platform. Kongsberg says that it has figured out how to quickly contextualize and parse data streams from all sorts of shipboard equipment, making it easier to make sense of the reams of data. Vessel Insight comes with an ecosystem of third-party data services, and it can communicate with DNV GL’s Veracity ship data platform for access to additional analytical tools.
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Danelec offers a competing service based on the protocol used to transmit VDR data to shore, and says that it can do it with less than one megabyte of data transfer and one dollar of satcom cost per day. Like Kongsberg’s solution, the DanelecConnect system uses a small onboard interface box to collect up ship data, process it, package it, and route it to the ship’s satellite terminal for transfer to a shore-based cloud storage / analysis platform. (Inmarsat’s Fleet Data service uses this platform under a partnership agreement.) Danelec recently rolled out a bridge monitoring system that uses this data to alert ship managers to navigational deviations in real time – a common practice in aviation, where it is known as Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA). “The airline industry employs FOQA very extensively, and pilots use it as a proactive learning tool,” says Hans Ottosen, CEO of Danelec Marine. “Our ambition is to bring this same option to ship officers.”
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Both of these products come with access to a cloud data platform with third-party applications and services for the shipowner. Bridge systems company Northrop Grumman Sperry plans an application ecosystem as well, but its offerings will be focused on the navigator’s needs. Michiel Meijer, the head of digital transformation for Sperry, says that its strategy is centered on making the second officer’s job easier, with a suite of back-of-the-bridge planning applications and a direct secure connection to the ECDIS. This should eliminate the need to shuttle back and forth with a USB thumb drive every time the charts have to be updated or a new route is laid out.
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“The next step is opening up our smart integrated bridge systems to other IoT domains, outside of navigation, and to enable better connectivity between the bridge and shoreside staff,” says Meijer. “To do this, we are developing a digital collaboration platform for the back of the bridge, with an electronic display in the place of the chart table. It will host a suite of applications from established companies in the domain of e-navigation, vessel performance and risk mitigation, and will take away some of the challenges of navigating.” Shoreside vessel operations centers will benefit from being able to see a duplicate picture of the platform, including bridge system displays, Meijer says.
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Wärtsilä, which competes with Sperry and Kongsberg in the bridge electronics market, recently announced a comprehensive package of navigation tools to streamline route planning and give the home office a better view into what happens on the bridge. It incorporates AI-driven route planning, weather optimization, hazard identification, automatic chart upd
