Ship Equip has signed a VSAT contract with the Anthony Veder Group of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to deliver the company’s SEVSAT maritime broadband system to 14 vessels.
The contract is for Ship Equip’s Ku-band VSAT solution, and applies to Anthony Veder’s fleet of LPG/Ethylene carriers, which operate mainly in Europe, Asia and occasionally on routes across the Atlantic.
“We found SEVSAT from Ship Equip to be the best solution after testing two and evaluating 6 or 7 other VSAT providers,” said René van’t Hof, CFO of Anthony Veder Group.
“We needed to improve communication for the crew, get better access to maintain and support the IT infrastructure on board and to improve operational communication between the vessel towards the office, providers and other mainland resources.”
“The decision to install Ku-band SEVSAT came after a 5 month trial period where one competing system also was tested. Now both vessels are fitted with Ship Equip’s SEVSAT system and a rollout plan for the remaining 12 vessels is being mapped out.”
Mr Van’t Hof notes that Ship Equip’s recent coverage expansion, via an agreement for transponder space on the Telstar T11N satellite over the Atlantic Ocean, helped the company to come to its decision.
“Our vessels are small scale LPG/Ethylene carriers with 15 to 20 crew sailing regional routes,” he said.
“The availability of bandwidth and good coverage that Ship Equip has on the T11N satellite in these regions greatly contributed to our choice of solution. Onboard the ship the network is split in one operational and one crew network with separate bandwidth allocations. The crew net is distributed via Wi-Fi on each deck.”
“One lesson we learned was to have a secure network onboard in place before installing the SEVSAT system. It is important to do this because otherwise the crew might attempt to connect the existing network themselves, causing possible security issues.”
