INMARSAT Plc. appears to make traveling on business and the business in travel a pleasure through global mobile satellite communications.
Based on several statements the company issued this month, here are three steps Inmarsat is moving in this direction:
- Entertainment on the high seas. With the launch of its Fleet Media, Inmarsat plans to bring the most recent viewing content—films, sports and news—to those at sea via an agreement with NT Digital Partners, a joint venture between global content agency Spafax and Swank Motion Pictures Inc. Inmarsat said the service makes available to the maritime crew movie and television show, along with sports and news content over the Inmarsat network for on-demand, offline viewing.
- Inflight high-speed connectivity. The successful test on March 4 by Inmarsat and Honeywell, airborne hardware manufacturer, demonstrated how the satellite service provider’s high-speed aviation network can support multiple file transfers and video streaming. The test confirmed that passengers will have the same Wireless-Fidelity experience while traveling at 40,000 feet as they would on the ground. Success in this round of testing, conducted from Honeywell’s Tewkesbury, United Kingdom facility means Inmarsat can now start the higher data rate testing.
- Laying down support for global high-speed broadband network. As Inmarsat continues to count down to the launch of its third Global Xpress (GX) satellite and the completion of its global high-speed broadband network—scheduled for early in the second half of this year, the company appointed Applied Satellite Technology Ltd. (AST) and SpeedCast as a Value Added Resellers (VAR) for GX serving the enterprise and maritime markets.
Inmarsat said AST is investing over $100,000 in network and traffic management tools to complement the GX services from Inmarsat targeting customers seeking high speed data services. Inmarsat added that appointing SpeedCast endorses its entry into the Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) market. A VSAT is a device–known as a small private earth station–that is used to transmit & receive data signal through a satellite, according to GlobalTT, an Internet service provider.
Last year Inmarsat said it is investing $1.6 billion in the overall high-speed broadband network. Based on Ka-band technology, the company said this network is expected to deliver higher performance consistently–with downlink speeds up to 50 Megabytes per second (Mbps) and an uplink to 5Mbps–through more compact terminals at a lower cost than existing VSAT services.
Dennis D. Estopace