Managing the ship's "floating telephone company"

Cruise ships have long been a prime market for the broadband communications capacity provided by C-band. Now a growing number of C-Band VSATs (Very Small Aperture Terminals) are appearing on commercial survey and offshore work vessels. As these ships and their supporting enterprises demand the onboard broadband access provided by VSAT systems, the ship’s owner essentially becomes a floating phone company. Rather than each caller receiving an Inmarsat bill charged to their credit card at home, with a VSAT, the ship operator pays a flat monthly fee for unlimited service.

To help the manage the “floating telephone company,” Maritime Communication Services (MCS) a wholly-owned subsidiary of Florida-based Harris Corporation has introduced the Commtroller 3K. This combination shipboard Least Cost Router (LCR) and Onboard Billing System provides two separate functions. On the switching side, it serves as a LCR, programmed to select the optimal service (C-Band, Ku-Band, L-Band and even GSM where available) ensuring the best possible quality of service at the lowest possible cost. On the billing side, it tracks each transmission—whether voice, fax, data, video conference or Internet usage—who has initiated the transmission, its duration and terminating point, and then can automatically produce a record (itemized bill) by the day, week or duration of cruise. A user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) enables the ship’s operator to reconfigure parameters on the fly so that different calling rates may be applied for ship’s business, crew calling, passengers, contractors as well as different destinations and types of service (voice, fax, data, video-conferencing, Internet).

The Commtroller 3K provides the means for commercial ship operators to recoup (and more) satellite communication costs from even the most transient of contractors and temporary passengers. The system has already been installed on P&O Princess Cruise’s flagship Aurora (see front cover photo).

With Internet cafes and nearly 3,000 people onboard placing calls, sending faxes and surfing the Web, (not to mention the back-office IT traffic required to support an enterprise that includes myriad restaurants, shops discos and casinos), the system is essential.

Harris MCS also provides all the other satellite communication equipment and turnkey worldwide service for the Aurora as well as the rest of the U.K.-based P&O Princess fleet. Between P&O Princess Cruises and Carnival Cruise’s Italian-based Costa Crociere, Harris MCS dominates the satellite services market for the U.K./European-based cruise industry. It is also now providing equipment and turnkey worldwide service to all Los Angeles–based Princess newbuilds. Currently, Harris MCS is installing the satellite communications onboard the Arcadia, the first vessel of P&O Princess’s new Ocean Village brand, targeted at the younger end of the U.K. cruise market.

While most of us are familiar with the ubiquitous Harris HF radio gear, many in the commercial maritime industry are not aware that Harris also provides the U.S. Navy with the satellite communications equipment for its surface fleet of aircraft carriers, frigates and destroyers. Maritime Communication Services (MCS) was founded by Harris to provide some of this cutting edge communications technology to the private sector. And ships are not the only floating platforms from which Harris MCS provides broadband communication services. It is also answering the growing requirement for Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) capabilities with a system dubbed Ocean Net—essentially an unmanned ocean observatory. A remotely controlled surface buoy generates power and transmits it down its mooring to seafloor and sea column sensors and devices. Data from these devices are transmitted back up the mooring to the surface buoy through optical fibers, then sent back to shore over the same satellite links MCS provides to ships. One Ocean Net system has already been deployed in the Western Mediterranean for oceanographic research. Talks are now underway with some Japanese agencies toward deployment of the next system there as part of a network for seismic monitoring and an early earthquake and tsunami warning system.

It is perhaps fitting that Harris MCS is leading the way for technology intended to detect and mitigate the devastation from natural disasters. The company’s remote land-based communications group still represents about a third of its annual sales. These services provide voice, fax, video, data and Internet communications to remote areas or regions devastated by natural or manmade disasters.
As Harris MCS President, Dr. Andrew Clark points out, “between our land based, shipboard and Ocean Net services, we are providing broadband communications at the speed of light to and from literally anywhere on earth including on, in and under the sea. We have broadband sensors at the bottom of the sea in over 7,000 ft of water, systems on a glacier above the arctic circle that are on motorized bases that continually raise to stay above the snowfall and I just got back from a trip to the Middle East and North Africa where we have systems in some of the most remote reaches of the Sahara Desert. Come to think of it, with our seafloor mounted seismometers, we are not just bringing back data from the deep seafloor, but also actually from miles beneath it.” ML

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