When offshore oil contractor and shipowner Subsea 7 needed to install additional satellite communications systems for specific client requirements, it needed a temporary VSAT solution quickly. Subsea 7 is involved in the construction, maintenance and inspection of various underway systems used in offshore oil and gas. Oil companies usually have representatives on board who require dedicated bandwidth for their business-critical communications.
Subsea 7 needed additional bandwidth on one of its subsea construction and support vessels operating in the North Sea, but the vessel did not have enough spare capacity. It would have taken too long to upgrade the vessel’s existing systems to meet the deadline, so the operator had to install a temporary solution. For the installation of temporary additional VSAT capacity, Subsea 7 approached one of its key suppliers, Astrium Services’ subsidiary Marlink.
The vessel was employed on several projects for different clients over a four-month period. Subsea 7 head of inspection and maintenance operations Bjørn Helge Kolbeinsen explains why the company had to increase the vessel’s VSAT capacity: “We needed highly reliable internal business communication for mail, Sharepoint, Lync and online Lotus Notes databases for client project support,” he said. “There was a contractual requirement of an additional 1,024 Kbps, which required an upgrade of the existing antenna or installation of a second system. So we asked Marlink if it could step in for a four-month period.”
Marlink provided the required connectivity on the customised Sealink service, using another 1.2m Ku-band antenna. Subsea 7 needed the equipment installed while the vessel was in operation with only a 48-hour docking period. This required a rapid response from Marlink because the installation of the VSAT equipment was required just a few weeks after Subsea 7 approached the Norwegian company about the project. The vessel used the temporary Sealink services, which provided 1.5 Mbps synchronous bandwidth during the four-month period. Then the system was uninstalled and removed from the vessel within 24 hours, and with less than two days’ notice of the vessel’s docking time.
“The ability to meet the short time delivery and high quality availability of the systems were key factors in choosing Marlink,” said Mr Kolbeinsen. “Everything was installed in one day, and it worked as expected. It was decommissioned at the end as agreed, with no surprises or problems of any kind.” With the clients using the temporary system, the vessel’s permanent VSAT fixtures were utilised for crew and operational communications.
Infinity being installed on container ships
German shipmanager Claus-Peter Offen is installing Navarino’s connectivity management system Infinity across its fleet to provide bandwidth-optimised Internet access over FleetBroadband (FB). According to Offen IT head Ascan Roosen, this will enable seafarers to use online e-mail accounts. “On the vessels equipped with Infinity and the Internet, the old crew e-mail program is outgunned by private e-mail boxes outside in the World Wide Web,” he explained.
For crew e-mail services, Offen still uses Inmarsat’s Amos Connect and Amos Mail. Some of the features of these applications are useful for cost and bandwidth control: file compression, address book management and attachment stripping are noteworthy. Offen uses the FB 500 terminals on board the container ships for more than just crew welfare, though.
“FB is essential to our vessel performance and energy efficiency monitoring, and IT support for the ships. With FB we get real-time data from the vessels,” said Mr Roosen. “Given the growing demand for accurate numbers from vessel operations, we vitally depend on FB. It is the basis of our new purchasing and plant maintenance software. We can also supply 24/7 support on the vessels’ computers and servers whenever this is needed. We can treat our vessels more like side offices rather than just sailing ships,” he said. Offen’s bandwidth requirements are driven by the company’s purchasing and plant maintenance systems. It has to send manuals, guidelines, safety and quality documents, and energy efficiency management and commercial reports to and from the ships. MEC
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