Introduction
Speedcast is one of the largest global maritime connectivity providers, offering fully managed, end-to-end remote communication and IT solutions. Aside from maritime, the firm is also active in the offshore and land energy markets, government, and telecom/enterprise sectors. In 2024, we estimate the company generated approximately $500 million across all its business operations.
Founded in 1989, Speedcast has become a trusted partner for industries requiring robust connectivity solutions. The company is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
In the commercial maritime and offshore markets, Speedcast is a well-established name. Over the years, it has expanded through strategic acquisitions, purchasing Harris CapRock (2015), WINS Limited (2016) and Globecomm (2018).
In 2020, Speedcast filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, leading to Centerbridge Partners officially taking ownership in 2021. The private equity firm invested $500 million in Speedcast as part of a deal that eliminated all its debt.
During this period, Speedcast agreed to sell its Inmarsat Maritime reseller business back to Inmarsat for $13.6 million. This included vessels on Fleet Xpress, FleetBroadband, and FleetOne, which Speedcast had been reselling to commercial maritime customers. At the time, Speedcast served over 2,600 vessels with Inmarsat services, contributing approximately 36% of its commercial maritime revenue. Internally, some employees referred to this sale as “The Great Carving.”
The story of Speedcast is one of resilience and strategic adaptation.
Merchant Shipping
The merchant shipping sector has been undergoing rapid transformation in recent years, with many shipping companies upgrading their connectivity systems from GEO VSAT and L-band satellite services to broadband LEO services such as Starlink, OneWeb, and other emerging LEO constellations.
With more than 55,000 internationally voyaging merchant vessels, the sector represents a significant market for maritime service providers, particularly Speedcast.
This shift has resulted in a surge in connectivity service revenues, with the merchant shipping satellite connectivity market projected to exceed $1.2 billion by 2025.
Speedcast continues to play a key role in this space, offering:
- GEO VSAT services
- Reseller services for Inmarsat-C GMDSS and Iridium GMDSS
- Iridium Certus and OpenPort
- Starlink and OneWeb LEO broadband services
Determining the best connectivity service for a merchant vessel can be complex due to the diverse vessel types and operational requirements.
Enterprise-Class Vessels and Traffic Steering
Enterprise-class vessels operated by companies like P&O Maritime or Reederei F. Laeisz require always-on, high-reliability connectivity. The robustness of their links is paramount, and traffic prioritisation technologies such as Steering and IPSLA (IP Service Level Agreement) help ensure seamless operations.
Example: How IPSLA and Traffic Steering Work
A container vessel using Speedcast’s multi-orbit connectivity solution may have a combination of:
GEO Ku-band VSAT, Iridium Certus, and Starlink LEO broadband.
If GEO VSAT latency increases while the vessel is in open waters, IPSLA detects the issue. The traffic steering system automatically shifts critical operational traffic (e.g., engine telemetry and navigation data) to a more stable VSAT connection, while crew internet traffic is redirected to Starlink LEO to maintain speed without compromising mission-critical functions.
Additionally, large operators classify services into priority groups—critical, high-priority, priority, and low-priority—to ensure essential applications remain uninterrupted.
Cost Flexibility
Conversely, smaller, cost-conscious merchant vessels often prioritise flexible pricing and lower bandwidth costs. For them, Starlink’s maritime services have been a game-changer, offering affordable broadband connectivity.
Speedcast has expanded Starlink usage across its merchant customer base, driving a revenue increase of over 10% in 2024 compared to 2023.
Future Growth
Speaking to Speedcast insiders, there is optimism about upcoming technologies and the ability to expand the service portfolio to build and deploy the best solutions for customers. As a technology-agnostic service provider, Speedcast can design customised solutions that enhance performance and operational efficiency. Customers can incorporate Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb, Kuiper, Space Norway and Lightspeed into a holistic, multi-orbit communications strategy as they become available.
Looking ahead, Speedcast anticipates a significant influx of broadband bandwidth within the next three to five years with the launch of new constellations like Lightspeed and Kuiper.
Valour Consultancy estimates that Speedcast’s merchant shipping connectivity business was valued at $120 million in 2024.
Offshore Energy
The offshore energy connectivity ecosystem, particularly for drilling and production vessels and assets, is a complicated and specialised marketplace. Only a small number of companies compete globally, and there are a few national specialist companies granted specific licenses within the national jurisdiction and rules.
Speedcast is one of the leading connectivity players among the very few companies in the offshore energy space. Its success is thanks to several reasons:
Firstly, the company has a strong heritage in this marketplace, with its acquisition of Harris CapRock many years ago.
Secondly, some of the offshore operations are extremely complex, with multiple tenants operating onboard all at one time. These operations often require separate networks, and then within those networks, there are varying levels of application prioritisation. Furthermore, Speedcast has excelled in this complicated operator ecosystem and enabled assets to prioritise traffic to support these requirements and even assign different connectivity paths to different applications and services.
Finally, since the dip in energy prices in 2020 and 2021, the market has bounced back with an increase in tender activity for offshore communications services, including the offshore deepwater and semi-submersible sectors. During the second half of 2024, Speedcast secured sizeable contract wins in the offshore energy vertical. This was primarily driven by its ability to take advantage of market activity in Qatar, Brazil, and Guyana.
The Why?
To provide some context to the reader, there are more than 120 drillships active worldwide, a further +70 semisubmersibles and nearly 200 FPSOs.
Each of these assets will have a primary and secondary client, networks for operations, crew welfare and a number of niche applications. Speaking of commerciality, depending on the requirements and region of operations, each will be spending more than $40,000 per month.
Initially, when Starlink was first launched, many considered the service “consumer only” and it was believed that offshore energy would not be applicable. This has proved to be incorrect and the use of Starlink for the crew welfare of the offshore energy workers is becoming widespread. Interestingly, Speedcast highlights that the offshore energy sector is very much an exciting sector, with its customers using multiple methods to leverage LEO technologies such as Starlink and OneWeb.
These “multipath” methods mean more than just combining multiple orbits and frequencies. Speedcast is now deploying a growing number of ‘dual-LEO’ or ‘all-LEO’ solutions, leveraging both OneWeb and Starlink service. This will likely continue as new options like Lightspeed and Kuiper come online in the coming years and potentially reduce GEO VSAT opportunities further in the future.
Energy sector customers generally put stringent requirements on their remote connectivity since drilling is a multi-million-dollar-a-day, mission-critical operation. The connectivity cost is a fraction of the revenue opportunities and overall cost of running the asset. As such, Speedcast frequently see customers leveraging Starlink for crew welfare or as a key part of a software-automated hybrid network.
As of Q4 2024, Speedcast has deployed Starlink for more than a third of customers across nearly all sectors and applications, including the offshore energy market, delivering the LEO technology as part of a multipath or dual-LEO service offering across customers’ remote sites.
In the future, Speedcast expects OneWeb to complement the offshore network, where application steering will become increasingly important. As more solutions become available, they will similarly be added to the mix. Hybrid connectivity, where a customer isn’t reliant on a single closed network technology or provider, will continue to be a key element across the energy sector. How OneWeb develop its coverage areas in 2025 will become even more exciting for Speedcast and other players in the future.
Valour Consultancy believes Speedcast’s offshore energy connectivity business was worth $55 million in 2024.
Passenger & Cruise
Alongside its lucrative offshore energy business, Speedcast has successfully engaged key cruise fleets leveraging its technology and capacity partnerships.
When Starlink first announced its commercial maritime availability in 2022, Speedcast completed the roll-out of Starlink LEO connectivity as part of a hybrid solution for Hurtigruten Expeditions within months.
The expedition operator is the world’s largest expedition cruise line. This implementation was likely the first cruise line in the industry to complete a fleetwide installation of the high-speed, low-latency LEO service. Speedcast serve an array of the largest ocean cruise operators including Carnival, Royal Caribbean and others.
Hurtigruten Expeditions
Speedcast was already providing the expedition operator with GEO VSAT and cellular connectivity for many years. It integrated Starlink’s LEO broadband connectivity via Speedcast’s proprietary advanced network management technologies, blending the LEO coverage with multiple transmission paths delivered to the fleet as part of a complete managed service.
Leveraging its SIGMA network management platform and enterprise SD-WAN, Speedcast make it possible to prioritise traffic, offer guaranteed service levels, and fully manage the customer experience – in short, creating a multi-path, multi-orbit service for Hurtigruten Expeditions.
More in the pipeline
In 2024, Speedcast also re-signed a multi-year agreement to deliver hybrid connectivity service to a leading cruise customer, Lindblad Expeditions, with a multi-gigabit commitment. Service is being delivered via Speedcast’s SIGMA SD-WAN intelligent edge network management platform.
Valour Consultancy believes Speedcast’s cruise connectivity business was valued at over $90 million in 2024.
Digital Services
Although the additional sales of LEO connectivity services from Starlink and OneWeb have provided a boost to resellers’ revenues, cross-selling digital services to customers has become ever more crucial to maintain profitability.
Speedcast’s SIGMA intelligent edge network management platform helps ensure 100% uptime by integrating multiple connectivity paths into a single, secure service.
SIGMA’s enterprise SD-WAN technology monitors and selects the right connectivity option to maintain application performance and deliver the highest availability.
SIGMA enables seamless integration of new connectivity options that come to market with traditional connectivity paths, making it easy for customers to introduce new technologies without significant increases in investment.
In its infancy, the cloud-based SIGMA platform served primarily the commercial maritime sector, growing to support an increasing number of Speedcast customers as the platform’s feature sets expanded.
Today, SIGMA is available in three distinct levels with scaled solutions appropriate for a variety of markets and business and operational needs.
- SIGMA Essential delivers essential network tools and applications for simple set-ups.
- SIGMA Enterprise delivers comprehensive network tools and applications for enterprise-grade ecosystems.
- SIGMA Elite offers its most powerful network tools and applications for advanced virtualised environments.
The next major release of Speedcast’s SIGMA software is an edge networking software which will introduce greater visibility and control at remote sites. The patent-granted network optimisation technology is designed to enhance site connectivity remarkably. The new services will account for the site or vessel’s current geographic position and its direction, factoring weather and historical route data to improve reliability and further traffic shaping, enabling quality of service to be modified based on WAN paths. This will open the door for customers to pick more versatile hardware options or even reduce hardware costs while better leveraging a customer’s existing investment.
Furthermore, as cyber protection becomes ever more crucial, Speedcast will integrate into its SIGMA platform next-generation firewall capabilities that help to protect against modern cyber threats, combining a conventional firewall with other network device filtering functions, such as an application firewall, deep packet inspection, and intrusion detection or prevention.
Available as an app on SIGMA, Speedcast is introducing full-scope cybersecurity management of all IT inventory onboard a ship by mapping IT assets in real time, leaving no blind spots and providing advanced Intrusion Detection. This software is tailored to the maritime industry and is certified by RINA, ClassNK, ISO27001/ISO 27017 and other shipping standards.
Valour Consultancy believes Speedcast’s digital services business was valued at $27 million in 2024.
Conclusion
Speedcast continues to be positioned as a key technology and connectivity provider across the maritime, offshore energy, and passenger cruise sectors. The company’s ability to integrate new technologies, such as LEO satellite solutions like Starlink and OneWeb, has contributed to its continued growth, with a notable revenue increase of over 10% in 2024 from 2023.
The evolution of maritime and offshore connectivity is driving demand for flexible, multi-path solutions. Speedcast has embraced a technology-agnostic approach, allowing it to offer hybrid connectivity services that blend GEO, LEO, and other technologies, cellular, RF and microwave.
The anticipated launch of new constellations like Lightspeed and Kuiper will further enhance its service offerings.
Offshore energy still presents lucrative opportunities as revenue drivers for Speedcast, with significant contract wins in regions like Qatar, Brazil, and Guyana. The industry’s growing reliance on hybrid connectivity solutions for mission-critical operations, coupled with the adoption of LEO services for crew welfare, underpins Speedcast’s ability to meet evolving customer demands.
Additionally, Speedcast is adopting a position as a technology expert in the world of passenger and cruise. Speedcast secured a major agreement with a key logo cruise customer and continues to integrate its SIGMA intelligent edge network management platform to optimise connectivity. The successful rollout of Starlink services for expedition cruise lines like Hurtigruten Expeditions demonstrates Speedcast’s ability to cater to the high-bandwidth demands of the passenger market.
Beyond connectivity, Speedcast is expanding its digital services portfolio, with its SIGMA platform playing a crucial role in network management and cybersecurity. The platform’s advanced capabilities, such as SD-WAN technology and next-generation firewall protection, are expected to drive further growth and enhance customer value in the years ahead.
Finally, the firm also has significant and growing business activities in the ground segment and ground network infrastructure sector under its enterprise/telecom segments. Many are not aware that Speedcast has the most certified teleports globally, and continues to increase the amount of network infrastructure builds for satellite fleet operators as they expand their constellations.
