[Satellite News – 4-7-08] SpeedCast CEO Pierre-Jean Beylier believes the company will have 100 ships installed with its new global maritime broadband service in the first year of operation. SpeedCast, a subsidiary of Asian satellite operator AsiaSat, has jointly launched the service with Eutelsat in a collaboration announced in late March.
“If we can achieve 100 ships installed and operating after 12 months, that would be a good and realistic performance,” Beylier said. “We would be very happy with that. We are leveraging certain infrastructures we have in place so we expect to be profitable within the first year.” Beylier said the two companies already had deals in place with commercial shipping operators.
        The service will be offered via Ku-band satellite capacity, which Beylier thinks makes it unique. “As far as I know, it is the first global Ku-band maritime service,” said Beylier. “It is a result of a long learning curve and observation of the maritime industry over the last few years and of the merchant shipping industry in particular. We have found out that there has been an evolution of the needs of the shipping companies. Their networks are now mostly IP-based, and they want to run their IP-applications on the ships. The shipping industry has grown tremendously which means it is more difficult to find crews, and then retain them. The VSAT [Very Small Aperture Terminals] technology has evolved a lot as well and what we couldn’t do five years ago, we can do today. Technically, we are now able to provide some cost-effective services, which can address the new requirements of the shipping industry like IP-networking and crew retention.”
    Beylier said providing the service in Ku-band has many advantages for customers, including a lower price tag. “Today, what is readily available to the maritime industry is Inmarsat services (FleetBroadband) which is now being actively promoted, and C-Band services,” he said. “I think our SpeedCast-Eutelsat Ku-band service has the benefits of a VSAT service, i.e. it is always-on, it is real broadband (above 512 kilobits per second), and it is not a usage-based service, but rather a monthly fixed fee. And compared to a C-band VSAT service, it brings down the cost barriers tremendously, both on equipment and service, allowing us to offer this service to customers who so far, have not been keen to have these services because of the prohibitive cost.”
    Beylier said he thinks SpeedCast has a competitive advantage by combining operations between AsiaSat and Eutelsat.
    “We have the advantages of both worlds,” Beylier said. “Both groups own satellite capacity, which is important, especially at a time when there are more and more shortages of capacity in certain areas. Secondly, we have the expertise to operate VSAT hubs. SpeedCast operates on many VSAT hubs. There is a real experience there that is important when you start rolling out multiple applications on VSAT, and need to prioritize them. Having that operational expertise is a key advantage. We also have some experience with content. Being able to distribute content to those ships for the crew will be an important value-added service. There are very few VSAT operators who are also active in the media industry.”
    The decision to team up with Eutelsat to offer this global service was critical in order to make the service global. “We are an Asia-focused satellite service provider and we wanted to team up with a strong company in areas such as Europe, Middle East and Africa,” Beylier said. “We chose Eutelsat because there was a natural fit in terms of coverage. We have already been working with Eutelsat. We are already serving some of their requirements in Asia for terrestrial networks, as well as doing some maritime things together. It was really natural to keep working together with Eutelsat.”
    However, the maritime sector is not without competition and the new service will have to compete with others such as Inmarsat who are vying for this potentially lucrative market.
    Neither Eutelsat or SpeedCast will directly sell the service to customers, instead relying on traditional distribution partners to sell the service. This is another area where Beylier thinks the two players will have a competitive advantage. “Some competitive advantages will come from the distribution partnerships that we are putting into place,” Beylier said. “We are putting into place one or two big distribution partnerships, which you will hear about shortly.”
The service aims to cater for the next-generation media requirements of shipping companies. “I think there are two key drivers for the adoption of VSATs on those merchant vessels,” Beylier said. “First, it helps with crew retention. A number of these shipping organizations want to offer their shipping crew members Internet access, VoIP and additional entertainment content. So, I think being able to provide innovative voice services and video content will be important. The second driver is the extension of the corporate network to the ships so the vessel becomes a mobile office and can support all the corporate applications. That is something that is a reality with VSATs on board. We need to be able to provide security and encryption for sensitive data. This is a key component of our service.”