Vessels of all Types Use JUPITER System for Land-like Connectivity at Sea
The global demand for broadband doesn’t stop at the shore. Passengers and crew aboard ferries, fishing vessels and tour boats all need to be connected – all the time. The Hughes JUPITER™ System meets that need for maritime customers around the world.
“Because the JUPITER System is a multi service platform, with one gateway or hub, operators can meet all types of mobility needs, from consumer to aero to maritime, and cell backhaul too. You don’t need a separate system or to spend huge amounts on infrastructure,” explained Bhanu Durvasula, vice president, International, at Hughes. “This adds up to a wide range of deployment possibilities for a service operator. With inherent roaming capabilities, service operators can use the JUPITER System to offer high speed connectivity at sea, roaming seamlessly from operator to operator and system to system.”
For example, Hughes India delivered a turnkey managed service solution to an off-shore oil customer, supplying and installing equipment and providing monthly service support. The operation has six barges and three workboats in its fleet. Vessels are used for a variety of purposes, including ferrying 100-250 oil rig employees back and forth to the platform each day for work. Prior to this deployment, none of the vessels had been equipped with connectivity. Now, each vessel has high speed connectivity to support voice and email communications plus Wi-Fi for oil-rig crew members to access applications like the messenger service, WhatsApp. The customer chose Ku-band over L-band connectivity based on the higher speeds offered by the JUPITER Ku solution.
In Europe, a passenger ferry system that sails from mainland Spain to the Canary Islands wanted to expand its maritime capabilities beyond those supported by Ku-band satellites. Using Hughes JUPITER technology over Ka-band, its ferries now offer Wi-Fi to crew and travelers, with enough capacity and high-speed to support video streaming, point-of-sale transactions from the vessel’s restaurants and bars, and access to enterprise applications.
Another Hughes customer was laying undersea fiber to help connect the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, on behalf of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), the government owned telecommunications service provider in India. The ship operator selected Hughes to deploy VSATs (very small aperture terminals) with beam switching technology to provide uninterrupted connectivity for real-time communications from barge to shore. Here too, the ship’s crew has a full range of capabilities, including email, VoIP, web access, and WhatsApp.
In China, a commercial fishing operation with multiple small- to medium-sized boats needs fisherman to be able to communicate quickly with their companies regarding the daily catch as well as to stay connected with families and friends. Boat connectivity is also used for video surveillance and weather updates. Hughes has provided a JUPITER System and a large number of JUPITER modems to integrate with an existing antenna system so that the customer can have an upgraded experience over their previously deployed system.
These real-world examples show that it’s not just cruise passengers who want Internet access at sea anymore. With the Hughes JUPITER System covering many of the world’s oceans, maritime operations anywhere can enjoy land-like connectivity on open waters.