MAIN Broadband Maritime seminar INCLUDES BM CHANGES DECK AMMITEC hosted a seminar about broadband maritime in Athens in February. Here is the report BY LINE: By Dr Panagiotis Nomikos, president of AMMITEC BODY At a recent seminar hosted by AMMITEC in Athens on "Broadband Vessel Communications" several important announcements show that this area is now entering a strong growth phase. AMMITEC's event drew together almost all technology suppliers who are offering products on Broadband communications to vessels. They included the established providers who have long served this market (such as Invsat, Telenor, Stratos and Xantic) as well as newcomers to this field, at least for the Greek market (Telecom Italia and "Broadband Maritime" in association with Danaos). SUBHEAD Boeing A major piece of news was the announcement by "Connexion by Boeing" that they will be entering this market soon. "Boeing is the largest satellite maker and operator today, as well as the largest systems integrator in the world," said Mr. Richard Nordstrom who delivered the presentation from Connexion by Boeing. "From March 2004 we will start supplying 5 Mbit/sec broadband connections to flying commercial airliners, where passengers will be able to access the Internet at high speed rates. "Having the satellites and ground stations in place to target successfully aircraft that fly at 1,000 Km/hour at 30,000 feet over large parts of the world's oceans enables us to supply similar bandwidth to the vessels floating at much slower speeds on the water below, leveraging the same infrastructure for a better return on our investment", he explained. "I am surprised that people refer to 64 or 128 Kbit/sec connections as 'Broadband' today in the maritime sector, in contradiction to the established terminology in other sectors of the business world", said Mr Nordstrom. "We at Connexion by Boeing very much look forward to the time when we will be able to offer 'true broadband' speeds to the world's fleets at reasonable prices, unleashing the huge potential of making the vessels a truly integral part of the corporate IT infrastructure of shipping companies." Mr. Nordstrom indicated that "Connexion by Boeing" will begin to offer commercially the new service from very early 2005. He advised the shipping companies to keep watching carefully Boeing's announcements on the implementation of the new service. Mr. Nordstrom thanked AMMITEC for giving him the opportunity to talk about Boeing's intentions for the first time in public. "Your seminar is now part of history" remarked Mr. Nordstrom. Boeing's presentation has already generated intense interest amongst shipping companies and communications providers alike. SUBHEAD Stratos Yannis Serafim from Marlink and Alasdair Calder from Stratos both emphasized the long-established availability of Broadband services (since the late 80's) serving reliably the offshore and passenger/cruise markets. Recent announcements from new entrants such as "Broadband Maritime" (who have developed a product with an attractive pricing structure) have generated renewed interest in this field from the main deep-sea commercial vessel operators, as was noticed during the speech of CEO Mary Ellen Kramer. Colin Thomson from Inmarsat/Invsat and Constantine Manoussakis from Xantic also presented their companies' offerings and Flavio Siciliano from Telecom Italia expressed his company's intention to expand its presence in the Greek market by offering a broad range of services. Ottar Bjaastad from Nera made an interesting presentation on the possibilities to upgrade current Nera "Fleet" terminals into units capable to accomodate much higher communication speeds, thus offering a solution to shipping companies who made very recently substantial investments in "Fleet" technology and who might wish to consider an upgrade to broadband speeds. AMMITEC is very pleased to see the emergence of new players with innovative products, the maturing of technologies and the strengthening of the competition that will inevitably result in better and cheaper products. AMMITEC will continue facilitating the adoption of new technologies by organizing similar seminars whenever new exciting developments take place.