SEA DIGITAL ARTICLE
INCLUDES CHANGTES

Sea Digital, a company based in Virginia, US, has an interesting business to provide seafarers with shipboard calling capability - a crew calling card solution with two twists.

The first twist is that seafarers can use the calling card in payphones in ports as well as onboard ships - they don't need any local coins. 

The company has made arrangements with the terrestrial telephone companies of Australia, Spain, Turkey, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, France, Taiwan, Italy, USA, Canada, Switzerland, Greece and UK

Using the calling card they can make phone calls from any payphones or private phones in these countries -the cost of the call is billed to the calling card at around $0.50 per minute - lower prices are under discussion but not yet finalised. 

The second twist is that Sea Digital is being clever about trying to get the cards distributed onto ships - the person selling the cards can take a commission of up to 18 per cent.

Commissions on selling crew calling cards are a bit of a sore topic. On one hand, nobody wants to be seen to be taking money away from seafarers - on the other hand, crew calling cards would probably be more easily available if larger commissions were available from selling them.

For example, at 18 per cent commission, if you sell 50 $25 crew calling cards, which could easily be purchased by a single ship over the course of a month, the vendor can get commission of up to $225 - enough to make the effort worthwhile. 

Criticially, there is no risk involved, because you only pay for the cards when they are activated (although SeaDigital might like to have your credit card number just to be sure that you will pay). You don't need to activate the cards until you have actually sold them and have the money for them in your pocket.

SeaDigital envisages that ship suppliers and agents might be interested in selling the cards, maybe also missions to seafarers and, shipping associations; but there is nothing to stop seafarers with credit cards from entering into business with Sea Digital themselves, buying cards in bulk and selling them onboard the ship.

There is a third possible twist to the SeaDigital story - if seafarers make phone calls with their cellular phones in a port other than their home port, using the SeaDigital card, they might get a better rate than if they called home directly on their cellular phones - they would probably have to pay roaming fees in both cases, but they could get different prices.

A fourth possible twist, which SeaDigital has not yet explored, is putting in a voicemail system to enable families on shore to leave messages for seafarers - the next time the seafarer uses the SeaDigital card he can listen to the message.


SUBHEAD
Rates

The rates the seafarers pay are not fixed, which can lead to confusion as to how to get the best price - however they are, SeaDigital asserts, among the lowest available from Telenor, SeaDigital's partner.

If the ship has an Inmarsat -A or Inmarsat -Fleet, the seafarer can use the card to make use of superquiet time deals, with call rates in the middle of the night (Greenwich Mean Time) of just $1 a minute.

Current call costs for terrestrial calls (from payphones in ports) are $0.50 a minute; typical costs over Inmarsat mini-M are $1.88 a minute. SeaDigital is negotiating lower rates but they are not yet finalised. 

The cards also work with Iridium satellite phones.

SeaDigital is also working with shipmanagers to help them install phones that seafarers can use, either an extension to the main ship phone or a dedicated Inmarsat mini-M terminal just for crew use. It has 4-5 sales people talking to shipmanagers.