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Inmarsat Fleet is a new development in ship-shore communications; as Inmarsat proudly points out. The maritime industry has gradually moved from flags, to morse code, telex, fax, voice calls and now always on connections with MPDS. The question is how to get the best out of it.

As Andreas Sakellion of Inmarsat land earth station operator OTESAT said to start off the Digital Ship conference on Inmarsat Fleet in Athens, the general trend to bigger ships with less crew creates a need to incorporate the vessels into the land-based office infrastructure.

According to Mr Sakellion, the shipping industry is adopting new technology in a conservative, but new way.

“The maritime business will become a digital business,” he said. “Day to day operations can be made more efficient and effective.”

He describes Fleet 77 as “a revolution to communication,” as an all-in-on data and voice system facilitating ISDN and IP technology.

The really new feature, MPDS (mobile packet data service), has the ability to send smaller amount of data at a lower price than ISDN and is billed by volume, not by the time that is used to send the data.

Mr Sakellion said that crucial to the success of the new service are suitable applications. This means integrating current applications with new capabilities as well as developing new applications altogether. Addressing the audience he said, “you are running a successful business, but in order to stay successful you have to go digital.”

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Hanseatic Ship Management

Adonis Violaris of Cyprus-based Hanseatic ship management didn’t exactly flatter Inmarsat when he began his speech with the statement, “For many years I have considered the Inmarsat services the most primitive services available, compared to what we are used ashore.”

Comments from the audience confirmed that he was not the only one thinking this.

From his point of view he identified the main priorities of onboard applications being e-mail, technical support, weather routing, instant messengers, electronic charts, newspapers, training, purchasing, web services, web search, and internet banking services.

Three years ago, Mr Violaris was involved in a discussion working towards the development of Inmarsat Fleet.

“We were talking about a terminal that will provide the same facilities as the Satcom B with 64KB data transmission as a standard feature, a purchase price of something between $10,000 to $15,000 and an airtime per minute rate between the one of Mini-M and Satcom B something like $1.80,” he said. “I was really anxious to see this terminal onboard one of our vessels.”

 
The result is not quite the same, but considered worth the wait by Mr Violaris. He mentioned in particular the safety feature (the GMDSS capability) of Fleet, which does not yet make redundant the requirement to have a fully GMDSS compliant Inmarsat C terminal onboard, but could eventually replace it in theory.

Mr Violaris certainly acknowledged the fantastic opportunities that arise with a technology like MPDS, which could change the architecture of applications entirely. With an increased use of electronic tools onboard, however, a serious issue arises. “Do we need an IT manager onboard,” he asked.

The question was debated in the later-on panel discussion with very different views.

Hanseatic, as many other operators perhaps, does take a slow approach to the new technology, though.

While Mr Violaris clearly showed his enthusiasm about the new service, he admitted that his company is waiting to see if others will try the service first. Newbuilds, however, are the most likely candidates for first use. Addressing Inmarsat he concluded, “you have provided what we wanted, how we are going to use it is another thing.”

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Thenamaris’ view

Lucas Kattis spoke on behalf of Thenamaris ship management, a Greek owner and manager of a 50 vessel fleet. The company is known for its in-house approach to software development and, quite lyrically, says that maritime IT must be harmonized with the rhythm of the waves.

Mr Kattis said that company structures have to change when it comes to IT strategy. In the case of Thenamaris, this approach is rather advanced.

Its own, non-commercial, e-mail system was designed with Inmarsat Fleet in mind and has a centralized architecture. Based on internet e-mail services, it is accessible via a web browser. “If people are used to using Hotmail (etc), why should we not provide them with a familiar design?” asked Mr Kattis.

The advantage of a web-based e-mail system is that maintenance and updates can be handled from ashore, although it still requires onboard hardware facilities. Thenamaris promotes the use of open standards, rather than proprietary systems as the latter prevent the implementation of easy interfaces.

In terms of its communication software, Thenamaris is ready for Fleet. Yet, this enthusiasm does not manifest itself in quick decisions when it comes to buying the terminal. Similarly to Hanseatic, the company is waiting for others to do the first step.

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Danaos

Dimitris Theodossiou of Danaos Management Consultants confirmed that there is a trend to introduce centralized databases for use onboard. He said, “it is important to develop fleet-wide systems, not ship-board systems,” all of which would create an “almost online environment.”

Taking the database from the ship would minimize cost, he said, as there is no synchronisation needed and both implementation of maintenance are faster and logistically easier.

“But still it is not feasible for vessels to become a node of the corporate network,”  Mr Theodossiou argued. It is more the automation of onboard activities.

Speaking on behalf of Danaos as a ship operator, he concluded, “we will have Fleet onboard newbuilds.”

However he noted that it is very difficult to justify the expenditure of fitting terminals onboard existing ships, with communications costs typically just $1,000 a month.

He pointed out that there are no great needs in the maritime industry for enormous amounts of ship-shore communication. “Shipping has been designed around requiring no information to be sent between ship and shore,” he said.

With seafarers who do not speak English as a first language, it is often easier for them to communicate with the office by e-mail rather than telephone, and Fleet helps by reducing the cost and increasing the immediacy of this.

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Transas Telematics

John Hardcastle of Transas Telematics named instant communication and interaction as a main need in business.

“You can have the fleet manager, the purchasing manager, and 2 captains on different sides of the world talking to each other on Microsoft Messenger the all the time,” he said.

In terms of Transas’s own offerings, he pointed out ECDIS (electronic chart display and information system) as an IT system which could benefit most from a new technology such as Inmarsat Fleet. It would be possible to have dynamic updates to chart information, with the benefit of reducing cost and automating processes onboard, therefore also reducing error rates.

Weather information and routing services could be done in real-time via Inmarsat Fleet, which is an essential improvement to safety onboard. “The information from the shore-based office must be available when it is needed, not when it becomes cheaper to retrieve it,” Mr Hardcastle said, “solutions have to be found which support the need of urgent communication.”

Mr Hardcastle called for a standardisation of onboard terminals, such as radar, AIS and ECDIS. They must be switchable among each other as well as towards the communications terminal.

At the back office end, tighter integration is needed, with facilities to reliably track and trace own vessels. Instant messenger software were a good means to keep in touch with the operations onboard, said Mr Hardcastle.

For internet access, he suggested tight internal regulation and monitoring. Summing up a vital point of debate, he summed up, “for the ship operator it comes down to a cost question. Is the investment worth it?”

He went as far as to suggest that software and airtime prices should fluctuate in correspondence to the freight rates; when the shipping company makes money, the technology providers make money, and vice versa.

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Ulysses Systems

Panteleimon Pantelis of Ulysses welcomed the audience expressing he was “glad to see senior shipping people listening to technical issues, a banal issue a few years ago in the eyes of many.”

He said that most members of the shipping community are now regarding computers and electronic tools as a benefit to the business, not as “the boxes that will destroy the industry.”

Ulysses’ business is knowledge management. According to Mr Pantelis, there is huge scope yet to use information within a company.

Storage and dissemination are issues that need working on. “Technology should be facilitated to act as online libraries,” he said. “Unstructured information is useless, it needs to be accessible when it is needed.”

Ulysses is currently working on ways to facilitate IP technology to enable access to shore-based information from onboard. About technology, Mr Pantelis concluded, “if you gain value of technology, the use is increasing.” This could well be the case with using the satellite link for data transfers, despite the still existing assumption that ships can do without exchanging data with the shore.

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Safety implications

Steve Harding of 3g marine raised a couple of issues regarding safety.

He said that the first and foremost use of communication equipment is to “enhance the safety of life at sea. It can be used ship-to-shore distress alerts, shore-to-ship communication and ship-to-ship communication that relates to safety information.

“As soon as you get more than a few miles from the coast, no-one’s going to rescue you if the ship gets into distress, certainly not the coastguard,” he pointed out. “The only thing that’s going to rescue you is another ship.”

He told the story of the Achille Lauro rescue in 1994. The vessel sank in the Indian Ocean, but the rescue was actually co-ordinated from Eik in Norway, because that was where the initial rescue alert went to. “It was classic GMDSS, it was perfect,” he said.

Despite Fleet being compliant with the GMDSS requirements, though, it does not affect the requirement of a dedicated GMDSS Inmarsat C terminal onboard. But it can add safety features and make the receiving of information faster and most likely more cost effective, “it simply ensures that communication is stable,” he said.

In a rather mathematical calculation, Mr Harding demonstrated that if the “commercial benefits outweigh the cost of the communications equipment, the cost of safety is negative, i.e. safety is provided for free.” This goes both ways, though. If it is the other way around, “one cannot safely depend on it,” he added.

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Calculating the cost

David Clutterbuck of Rydex said that his company has already tested Fleet on the use for e-mail. There is no entirely sure way to calculate the break point between MPDS and ISDN, though. For the Rydex system, an amount of 15 KB was given.

The email system now comes with a tool which suggests to the customer the least-cost-option for the email transfer. In cases of relatively light, urgent email, MPDS will be suggested. In case of normal-priority, large chunks of data, ISDN is more economical.

Although choice is presented, the system does not automatically send the email via least-cost-routing. The customer still opts for the preferred method himself.

The figure of 15 kb is a figure relating to the Rydex system. Global Technology has found that the break point is at 50 kb. Tests have shown that this is entirely dependent on the type of application and system that is used.

Tristan Wood of Livewire Digital demonstrated his company’s IP Communications gateway, a sort of multiple user router which can be used in connection with Inmarsat Fleet onboard the vessel.

He said that the most important thing is cost transparency and that “the users need to know what they are paying for and what they get out of it.”

The gateway combines the administration and billing of e-mail systems, SMS, corporate LAN and internet access via the MPDS channel. It also provides cost profiles for ENC downloads and updates, e-procurement, telemetry and remote diagnostics as well as e-learning and ISM compliance.

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Paul Ashton

Paul Ashton, VP innovations with Xantic, talked about the possibilities of what ship-shore communications can create, particularly when it comes down to helping automate some of the seafarer’s work.

“Computers can make assessments far quicker than the human brain,” he noted.

Mr Ashton said that one unexplored application was using Inmarsat Fleet together with cargo loading and tracking systems, designing software which would help position the cargo in the perfect right place on the deck and making sure all relevant parties had the data they need.

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Field trials

Steve Allam of Imhotek spoke on behalf of the field trial group that has been involved in testing Inmarsat Fleet in action.

The group involved Maersk and Telenor, P&O Nedlloyd and Xantic and a research vessel and Comsat (now also Telenor). All of the participating vessels used the Thrane and Thrane Capsat 77 hardware.

The onboard IT basics included Windows 2000, a Rydex email system, a weather routing application, a firewall, virus protection programme and NetNanny, an application that regulates internet access. Furthermore, the tests involved the use of a G4 fax and a digital camera.

Different file sizes were tested via ISDN and MPDS, with ISDN reported to perform reliably and some teething problems with MPDS. That was in January, most issues have been resolved now, according to Mr Allam.

The peak throughput rate with ISDN was 58 kbps; MPDS reached a peak speed of 33 kbps. The average with MPDS can be expected to be around 14 kbps.

The data overhead (amount of data which is added to the original file in the data communication) is 9 to 13 per cent for ISDN and 11 to 32 per cent for MPDS, which was actually less than the data overhead for GSM and GPRS, the protocols used for mobile phone data.

The average cost with ISDN was at $ 4.31 per 100 KB; MPDS cost $ 4.47 per 100 KB, which demonstrates that the average break point was around the 100 KB mark.

According to Mr Allam, any application which creates a lot of dead-time (time when no data is being exchanged between ship and shore), should be used via MPDS, such as database downloads, regular document downloads and IMAP sessions. Cost can also be saved when graphics are turned off in the web browser.

“It makes sense to webbrowse,” he said, “if you need some information and the benefit of having it outweighs the cost.” The test even tried three-way text messenging.

With good success. The trial vessels particularly liked the antenna size, the G4 fax, the flexibility of choice between ISDN and MPDS and most of all the potential cost savings that could be achieved. They also liked knowing who was online and talking to them immediately on Microsoft Messenger. “Seafarers all know how to use Hotmail and Messenger because they use it when they get into port,” he said.

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The debate

In the concluding debate, Panagiotis Nomikos of Stelmar Tankers said that his company was very keen on the new technology. Stelmar considers itself as an “early adaptor of new technology and sees the vessel as part of an integrated environment.”

“We have a policy to move the data to where the data originates, and we see data coming from the vessel itself,” he said. “We want to bring the vessel closer to the office.”

Adonis Violaris of Hanseatic expressed again his strong interest in the new service and admitted that some of his questions were indeed been answered.

He was particularly enthusiastic on additional services such as Livewire’s gateway, which would reduce the administrational headache Inmarsat Fleet would cause the ship managers.

He also praised some of the speakers for finally explaining how much Inmarsat Fleet would actually cost. “Thanks for Tristan with his costs, otherwise the IT onboard would be a headache for us,” he said. “Thrane and Nera did not think about that for some reason.” 

He also predicted that Fleet will eventually replace both Inmarsat A and B. “Fleet is a computer with voice facility,” he said.

An important question would be whether small ship owners have to change their whole IT structure to be able to use it efficiently. Using it the same way as A and B (as suggested by Kim Gram of Thrane and Thrane), “would be like buying a Porsche and driving it like a Mini.”

WEBSITE DIRECTORY

Download some of the presentations from the conference

www.thedigitalship.com/presentations.htm

Information about Inmarsat Fleet and links to service providers

www.inmarsat.com/fleet

Hanseatic Ship Management

http://www.hanseatic.com.cy

Thenamaris Ship Management

www.thenamaris.com

Danaos Management Consultants

www.danaos.gr

Transas Telematics

www.transas.com

Ulysses Systems

www.ulysses-systems.com