Nor-Shipping 2023 was back in full swing, and Valour Consultancy was quick to join in the fun.
Our analysts, Alishia Sims and Josh Flood, flew out to Oslo on Monday and returned later Thursday afternoon. It was Alishia first’s maritime conference and maybe Josh should not have told her there was a potential to meet some Nordic heroes, as this was her background reading for the show… (– Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman).
From a connectivity perspective, one of the major highlights was the launch of OneWeb’s maritime service in conjunction with Intellian. On the first day, OneWeb kindly invited us to their briefing which Celeste Endrino-Cowley (OneWeb), Jon Harrison (from Intellian) and Timo Biemueller (from Speedcast) provided some interesting insight.
With the launch of the LEO maritime service, Speedcast deployed the solution with RV Polarstern. The German polar research and science vessel has completed more than 100 trips to the polar regions. The illustration of this vessel also highlights the difficulties that GEO services have in serving the polar regions.
Polarstern holds up to 90 crew, and before the use of OneWeb’s solutions used a plethora of different VSAT frequency technologies and systems to accommodate its crew and operational requirements. The vessel used Intellian’s 70cm parabolic system (OW70M). The airtime speeds delivered were: maximum information rate (MIR) 70/50 Mbps and committed information rate (CIR) 12/6 Mbps. Over the course of the research findings, it is estimated that between 85 to 95 GB of data was used per day, equating to slightly less than 3 TB per month.
In conjunction with this, Intellian announced that the OW50M will be available next month. Also, expect its new maritime flat panel OneWeb antennas to be available in the first half of 2024.
Other interesting events at the conference were Inmarsat’s breakfast seminar focusing on decarbonisation and the efforts that required industry-wide to hit carbon-neutral targets. As well as Iridium’s workshop on its GMDSS solution with Lars Thrane. One merchant shipping company informed us they were in the process of switching from OpenPort to Certus.
In the meanwhile, several maritime service providers showcased to us how they were packaging and implementing hybrid solutions for the new LEO offerings and what these packages look like. Marlink Group’s Maritime President Tore Morten Olsen kindly jumped into a quick conversation with us about Marlink’s progress as a Starlink reseller partner and we were flabbergasted with the number he stated to us.
Finally, with a touch of humour, Cobham provided some interesting background shots to Alishia’s photo, see below, and a great discussion on how they plan to develop and progress in the near and long term.
For more information from Nor-Shipping 2023 and insights from our latest portfolio of reports, please click here.
