Alan Spicer Marine Telecom Main BLOG

BGAN for Marine, or Fleet Broadband hasn't BeGUN yet, but it's coming...

I've done a couple of other articles here on my blog about BGAN/Fleet Broadband. And we're waiting patiently for its release and to know more about the equipment/costs and service/costs.

Panbo Marine Electronics Weblog has done some interesting posts and links regarding this: BGAN, beginning on boats?.

One of the links he mentions Steve Dashew's information on the pricing of BGAN caught my interest because I had heard, and have mentioned to several yacht captains, that the coming Fleet Broadband might be desired by some vessels because they can "Turn it Off". Which means it wouldn't be constantly billing $2500+ a month like a comparable VSAT system.

Of course the decision between VSAT and BGAN/Fleet Broadband might come down to "How much do you use it?". If you use a lot of data or per-minute broadband speed downloads you might use over $2000 a month. A yacht captain might want to (pardon the pun) "plot out" how much Internet at High Speed they actually use. If you let the crew on as well (good for morale) and the owners (good for getting this all paid for ;-) and the guests. You might find you are using Lots of Megabytes per day.

In the old Fleet 55 and 77 systems it was an occassional occurance that someone left the High Speed Data (HSD) or per-minute connection up all weekend by mistake. The resulting multi-thousand dollar bill wasn't fun. I've even been on yachts where the guys I worked with were directly or indirectly accused of being the cause of such a satellite bill. It was such a bad occurance that we often put an electronic key switch in the ISDN line and handed the key to the captain. "It's your key now, it's your satellite bill, watch it carefully." Give them the key when you leave the yacht after working onboard and show the captain that "it's off". The same kind of thing could occur with the shared Mobile Packet Data Service (MPDS) connection. If left on, Windows Computers for example, could download huge Updates at any time. It wouldn't be difficult to run up a bill by $30 per megabyte either, if you were not carefull. I always recommended shutting that one down as well and not having any automatic dialing or reconnecting enabled (if controlled from a Windows Computer.)

What we did do for awhile, and still would do on request, is to install Email batching software... that lets you have a sort of Mail Server onboard. Crew could email each other and it would never have to leave the yacht. Email size limitations could be enabled and enforced. Email traffic was batch processed for sending either on schedule or whenever an authorized person such as captain wanted to run a Mail Session.

I also recommend, especially for per-minute and per-megabyte satellite equipped yachts (that's all of the Globalstar, Iridium, and Inmarsat Mini-M, Fleet 33, Fleet 77 equipped vessels) to install other options for Internet Communications. Such options as Amplified WiFi Access and Amplified Cellular Access Systems. Most of the cellular in the beginning was GSM/GPRS. But newer equipment is allowing Broadband Cellular as well for areas that have that type of coverage. WiFi Hotspots are in a lot of marinas and anchorages. Cellular might just be for your home country area, as far as for Broadband Internet Speeds. So you use your other options - WiFi and Satellite (in that order) when the cellular is not available or roaming would be too expensive.

So... We'll have to see how the BGAN - FleetBroadband Service and Systems come out. And help captains and owners to decide if that's the one to choose over VSAT or other systems.

It's also interesting that that link to Steve Dashew is mentioning using some type of 1 axis (single axis?) tracker to put a non-marine BGAN system onto a boat. That must be the type of thing that Steve Buckingham of KVH was saying wasn't recommended or wasn't supported. I'm sure that thing is not going to work out at sea. But they have it working in dock.

Reminds me of when I did a few Direcway (now HughesNet) Two-Way Satellite Installations for yachts. The first yacht actually requested exactly that, and wouldn't take no for an answer. "Aye Aye Captain. DirecWay is what you'll get". He used it for a few years actually. A Direcway dish on a non-penetrating metal stand. He would take it out whenever he came in dock, and would roll out the Transmit and Receive RG6 cables that he had on wire spools, and set up and align the thing and be online. I did similar setups for a couple of other boats. I think most of them have migrated off of that over the last couple of years. One yacht (no names mentioned) actually found a way to mount the antenna on the yacht on a vertical metal structure up in the bow area. And another one still carried the whole non-penetrating stand onto the yacht and set it up in a open area of the fly bridge. Both reported that the tolerances of Direcway were good enough for them to hold service with the bird while in dock. Direcway never had a marine mobile system and did not approve of any marine installation. Although there are systems for RV's that pop up and align automatically.

There's always a wide range of sizes or yachts and budgets and requirements, so I will always stand ready to do my best to help them get the best for their particular situation.

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Alan Spicer (a_spicer (at) bellsouth.net)
http://telecom.dyndns.biz