A photo of a Navmont vessel (Photo: Inmarsat)

Inmarsat has signed another maritime deal, its third in a matter of days. The UK satellite operator announced Sept. 30 that Italian crude oil tanker owner Navigazione Montanari (Navmont) will renew and extend the use of Fleet Xpress services across 13 ships and envisages the transfer of five more tankers from competitor services to Inmarsat’s maritime broadband services by the end of 2021.

The full scope of the agreement also covers Fleet Secure Endpoint cyber security protection, Flee Care preventative maintenance and support and Inmarsat’s Fleet Data IoT platform.

Interestingly, Navmont becomes one of the first Inmarsat clients to adopt Fleet Care service maintenance support for Fleet Xpress. Fleet Care replaces annual maintenance agreements with a service offering support from Inmarsat engineers at ports worldwide without incurring hourly charges. Navmont will also maintain separate bandwidth channels for vessel management and crew connectivity with the agreement offering the flexibility to adjust business data use on request.

Inmarsat has been very busy in the maritime market lately. It previously announced deals with Solstad Offshore and Petredec, at the end of September, as it looks to drive strong revenues in the maritime arena.

“Everything changed in the maritime market after Inmarsat launched Ka-band services 4 to 5 years ago. It has brought the stability, reliability and satellite availability we need to synchronise between ship and shoreside. The service also keeps crews connected to the Internet as well as with friends and family at home. Ka-band also offers the throughput speeds to update software fleetwide as part of day-to-day operations,” Giovanni Campanelli, ICT Manager, Navigazione Montanari said in a statement.