Photo: Seaspan

Containership company Seaspan Corporation has signed a deal with KVH Industries to equip its fleet with OneWeb’s Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) connectivity, Seaspan announced Tuesday.

Seaspan is an early adopter of LEO technology and has already equipped its entire fleet with Starlink connectivity from SpaceX. Seaspan said the deal for OneWeb will augment its existing LEO services. 

The containership company said it is pursuing “shore-like internet connectivity at sea.” The OneWeb rollout will improve its data connectivity infrastructure. The company is looking to leverage high-bandwidth applications like cloud-based software which was previously not possible at sea. 

Seaspan leadership specifically mentioned “provider diversity and minimizing geographical blackout zones,” as a reason to work with KVH and OneWeb. 

“LEO satellite technologies have set a new benchmark for vessel communications, offering high-bandwidth, low latency, and reliability far beyond traditional marine satellite solutions,” commented Adrian Alb, senior manager of IT operations at Seaspan. “This collaboration with KVH aligns with our goal of enhancing provider diversity and minimizing geographical blackout zones, further bolstering the robustness of our satellite communications infrastructure.”

KVH has capacity agreements for both Starlink and Eutelsat OneWeb capacity. Earlier this year, the company said it was stepping away from hardware manufacturing to focus on its position as a hardware-agnostic, multi-orbit connectivity provider.