Telenor Satellite Director of Datacomms Products and Services Jan Hetland. Photo: Telenor

Telenor Satellite’s Ka-band maritime business is seeing strong growth as the benefits of having Ka-band capacity have started to kick in. Telenor Director of Datacomms Products and Services Jan Hetland told Via Satellite that its Ka-band maritime business is quickly matching what it had in Ku-band. While Telenor only launched Ka-band services two years ago, the operator is happy with how fast its business has grown. “In just the last 12 months, we have seen 160 percent growth in the number of connected vessels on our Ka-band platform,” he added. “What that means, is that in the course of around 28 months, we have grown a maritime Ka-band business which is roughly the same size as our Ku-band maritime business.”

Hetland said that having Ka-band capacity is making a difference in a number of ways. Telenor found that it can offer substantially higher bit-rates with a 60 centimeter Ka-antenna than it can with a 1 meter Ku-antenna. “A smaller dish weighs less, takes up less deck space, and costs considerably less,” he added. “So, I think that has been a door opener for us in terms of increased success in certain segments, such as fishing for example. In the fishing segment, this is by far the biggest segment in terms of numbers of vessels. We have hundreds of fishing vessels connected, both in terms of Ka- and Ku-band. We see smaller fishing vessels taking Very Small Aperature Terminal (VSAT) than what we did in the past. They are typically not taking huge amounts of bandwidth, but it is steadily increasing.”

As far as the Ka-band maritime market is concerned, Hetland believes there is still quite a bit of untapped potential for Telenor to do more, specifically in Ka-band. He points to the fact that Telenor has a stable Ku-band business, but now it has more spectrum and more resources in Ka-band. Other markets within maritime could start to open up for the company. “In many ways, Ka-band is our growth potential. Oil and Gas is one sector where we feel can do more in the next couple of years, and same with ferries, as well as fishing. I think the coverage we have up north makes us quite unique. That combined with the fact we are seeing every bit as good as reliability on Ka-band that we are on Ku-band,” he said. “There is a need to address higher bit rates. We hear about speed records from some of the other satellite companies which provide connectivity to cruise ships in the hundreds and gigabits per second. There is a need to get into the hundreds of megabits per second and multiple hundreds of Mbps to give a truly great user experience, particularly to passengers on ships.”

Having Ka-band capacity has definitely added to Telenor’s capabilities here, but the operator has also looked to change it business model to serve customers better. “Another big focus area for us currently is to improve the customer journey, and we have changed tremendously over the past few years from being primarily a wholesale capacity supplier to providing managed services to a large network of resellers,” Hetland said. “This, in turn, has made it necessary to automate and streamline how we do business and interact with our customers. Customer portals providing access to all information a customer would ever want from us is key in our strategy going forward.”

So, what trends are there in the maritime market right now and will Telenor be able to sustain its current levels of growth? Hetland said that when he looks at the market, he sees that the major Request for Proposals (RFPs) are associated with large shipping companies, who are often doing global transportation with big fleets. He admits that this tends to be an area where Telenor is not that deeply engaged, because it does not have global aspirations. “In terms of the new business we might be able to do, there are clear signs of the Oil and Gas sector picking up a bit of speed again after slow years caused by the financial downturn. So, we are seeing increased demand from that sector. There are also positive signs from the passenger segment. It takes time for our customers to rollout WiFi and 3G and 4G networks on ferries. It takes time to figure out the right business model, and how to make money on these. But this is another segment we believe will do good numbers for us in the coming year,” he added. 

Cyber

Like most operators targeting mobility sector, Telenor is keeping a keen eye on cybersecurity, particularly as shipping companies such as Maersk have been targeted in high profile cyber attacks. Hetland said that Telenor in the middle of a major network redesign to better address cybersecurity risks. “In terms of the redesign, that is something that we are physically deploying this year and will be transitioning our networks and systems onto the new network throughout a good part of 2019. Cybersecurity is definitely more in our thoughts, and as we are part of a telco, cybersecurity is very much on the agenda these days,” he concluded.