Royal Caribbean International (RCI) is one of the world’s largest cruise ship brands. The company is in the middle of a highly aggressive program upgrading the communications and entertainment experience on its ships, for which it is working with a number of companies in the satellite sector. Greg Martin, director of operations, RCI, talks about the company’s demands for bandwidth, the process of equipping ships with these services, as well as where the company goes next in terms of its communications and connectivity strategy for its ships.

VIA SATELLITE: Can you give us an update on where you are with equipping your ships with a satellite based connectivity solution?

Martin: As of April 29, we had completed all 33 ships; every ship has been migrated to Harris Caprock for primary and back-up satellite services. We have installed 89 new antennas, new pedestals and re-enforced the existing deck structure to support them. The project happened over nine months, and I believe we worked in 14 different countries. Basically, we increased our bandwidth from a growth perspective ten times compared to what we had before. The potential of what we can do on the ships has gone up and we can add to that if we need too. We operate 11 pools of bandwidth right now. Every market outside of the Artic Circle we are able to offer these services.

VIA SATELLITE: What have been the key early learnings of the deployments so far?

Martin: This is a very unique project for us. I don’t think anything like this has ever really been done before. So, the big challenge is we had a very tight timeframe in order to get it all done. In January, we had six ships that got upgraded; we had a lot of concurrent deployments going on in different parts of the world, different time zones, we had to get things done as quickly as possible as we had to complete the cut over while the ship ran normal operations including debarking and embarking up to 6,000 guests. For every ship – bar 2 or 3 – we did the installation in one day. During a normal deployment day, we had to remove the old antennas and equipment in the morning, install the new antennas and be done by 4:00-5:00 p.m. local time. So, there was a tight window to get things done. In every single case we were successful.

VIA SATELLITE: Can you give us a timeline as to what will be happening for the rest of the year?

Martin: We have put out a new platform, which we refer to as version 1.0. Part of it was the hardware installation, but we also put out some new devices to better manage the bandwidth, because no matter how much bandwidth you give to a ship, they use it up. We installed a new bandwidth management stack that included advanced network and security equipment, so we can optimize the traffic and perform quality of service. Also, security equipment was installed. We have a version 1.0 product and we are working to optimize that across the fleet. A lot of the hard work is done in terms of the installation but we have a lot of work to do to get the most out of the new system.

VIA SATELLITE: You mentioned version 1.0. What might be the likely upgrades on version 2.0?

Martin: Basically what we are talking about is optimizing and leveraging our new bandwidth management stack to offer the best experience for our guests. So, we can control what types of traffic use the bandwidth through quality of service from end-to-end. We now support quality of service for video, voice, cellular and guest and back office traffic. We are trying to get as much as we can out of the new modem infrastructure and this is something we are still working through. We moved to a dynamic SCPC network which was obviously a big change. We are trying to figure out the right formula for that. Due to the seasonal nature of our business, we have a lot of ships in the Caribbean in the winter and a lot of ships in Europe and Alaska in the summer. We might have eight ships in Northern Europe, and then we could have just one there a few weeks later. We obviously have to do a great deal of planning to keep up with the global nature of our business. We need to understand the right mix of capacity in different regions so the ships can leverage that.

VIA SATELLITE: How much bandwidth do you actually use?

Martin: We have about 400 Mbps of bandwidth. That is pre-O3b. When O3b is launched we will have a dedicated transponder per ship. There is definitely a lot of concern around latency issues and O3b is helping us address that. The cruise industry clientele has shown a concern over having a different experience while at sea. With O3b it is the same experience so, our demands for bandwidth will increase over time. We will be buying more blocks of bandwidth going forward; O3b is definitely part of our roadmap. We are partnering with them on many levels such as engineering and design.

VIA SATELLITE: Are there any early trends in terms of passenger usage?

Martin: I would say there is a really big trend in terms of Internet traffic. We are continuously improving our wireless coverage throughout our fleet so more people can leverage the system. We are moving to a model where you can be connected during the entire cruise if you so choose. The idea is to start to move away from the per minute billing. People are pushing more towards always connected interactive content and applications. People are trending to use more and more tablets and smart devices as well. Like any Internet carrier, we want to provide a good experience to everyone. That means we sometimes have to scale the experience dynamically to offer a consistent experience to everyone. Part of the reason we have put out these new tools is to balance things out. With the old system, a couple of people could consume the entire ship’s bandwidth or the entire pool for the region. We are now able to monitor and manage the overall experience.

VIA SATELLITE: Is bandwidth a “must-have” now?

Martin: Passengers expect it to be there, but not everyone is going to leverage it all the time. But, there is an expectation that it is available; there is a growing population of people that demand it to be there. I wouldn’t say it is everyone, but there are people who want to make sure there is connectivity before they cruise. The majority like to have the possibility of these services.

VIA SATELLITE: How do you see your relationship with the satellite industry now evolving?

Martin: We are always going to be pushing the envelope, so we will always be looking for more capacity. We are looking for better availability and reliability of the systems, and we want to get as much as we can out of the MHz purchased. The other thing we are going to keep pushing on is the latency issue; so not just bandwidth but also latency. With O3b that really comes into play. We have the bandwidth, but latency is something the satellite sector makes a different experience. We see a growing market, growing demand for bandwidth. We will continue to push the envelope in terms of caching solutions, modem technology, and looking at higher throughput satellite options, and specifically the ones that minimize latency.

VIA SATELLITE: Finally, how much does it cost to equip 33 ships?

Martin: It is an investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars per ship.