We want to give a big welcome to a new gCaptain blog sponsor KVH. Here’s basic information from KVH on their impressive technology: [Continue Reading →]
A Welcome To KVH TracPhone® V7 and mini-VSAT – Broadband Satellite At Sea
Tags: · communication_satellite, inmarsat, internet, KVH
Incredibly Small Satellite Antennas For Ocean Broadband Internet
Our friends at Panbo bring us a sneak peek at KVH’s ultra small broadband satellite antenna for ships. They write:
Yup, at not much bigger than a Halloween goody bucket, the new TracVision M1 means upstart Intellian’s “world’s smallest in-motion marine satellite TV antenna” claim didn’t go unchallenged for very long. As to which one really is the smallest, that seems to depend on how you evaluate weight versus size. The M1, for instance, is only 7.5 pounds and can purportedly install on a conventional VHF antenna mount. The M1 also comes with KVH’s combo 12v controller/Direct TV receiver, which should make for a compact and easy install, but if you want HD channels, Intellian’s i1 let’s you use a Dish or ExpressVu receiver that can. The same goes for King Control’s new model of the VuQube, the fully stabilized 4000, also introduced at this show. Of course none of these sat TV systems have accumulated much user time, and it’s not easy to stay locked on a satellite with a small dish in a bouncing boat.
You can read the full story including photos of the new Iridium handsets HERE. Also keep your eyes out for the new KVH Tracphone equipment which promises to bring unmetered and low priced (well at least relatively) internet bandwidth connections to the bridge of your ship.
Related Posts:
Tags: · communication_satellite, internet, KVH
Fixed Rate Broadband Enters The Pacific
No it’s not Broadband RADAR but…
We have some exciting news from the team at KVH Industries. Here’s a clip from their press release:
Taking a major step toward expanding availability of the mini-VSAT Broadband service, KVH Industries, Inc., (Nasdaq: KVHI) today announced that it has signed a 5-year agreement with GE International Holdings, Inc., (also known as SAT-GE) to lease satellite capacity on its GE-23 satellite to provide coverage in the Pacific Ocean via the satellite’s North Pacific Ku-band Beam. Expected to go live in December 2008, the new coverage area will include Alaska, the west coasts of Canada and the United States, Hawaii and extend into Asia. It represents a significant expansion in the availability of the increasingly popular mini-VSAT Broadband Internet and voice service as well as the latest milestone in the KVH and ViaSat joint effort to provide affordable mobile broadband connections around the globe.
“The extension of mini-VSAT Broadband coverage into the Pacific will allow us to support a significant portion of the world’s shipping lanes, including blue water coverage between Asia and ports in the U.S. and Canada,” said Martin Kits van Heyningen, KVH’s chief executive officer.
VSAT is the technology that allowed our founder, John Konrad, to start this site while still shipping. While he was based in the Gulf Of Mexico his drillship utilized this technology to offer wireless internet in the accommodations of his ship. This worked because the vessel had a long term contract within the footprint of a VSAT provider. Ships operating internationally have been less fortunate relying on INMARSAT to relay basic email due to the prohibitively high expense for purchasing the satellite receivers and paying for bandwidth on a metered rate plan. [Continue Reading →]
Related Posts:
Tags: · Communication, communication_satellite, inmarsat, internet, KVH, Marine Technology
From Ship to Space – Rocket Platforms at Sea
Our favorite competitor in professional mariner news, Marine-Buzz.com, recently had an exceptional post on maritime technology used to launch rockets into space.
Having seen ships being used as a Hospital, University, Museum, promoting fashion, its time now to see a ship being used as a Platform to launch satellites. Sea Launch is preparing to launch a Zenit-3SL rocket with a Thuraya-3 communication satellite shortly from a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean. To view live web telecast click here.
The Sea Launch is the world’s first ever commercial international project to develop and operate a sea-based space launch system. The main objective of this project is to launch satellites from a mobile sea-based launch platform.
The key advantages of the Sea Launch system over ground launch sites are as follows:
- Ability to launch directly from the equator thus reducing unit costs of their delivery to the target orbit.
- Ability to launch with any azimuth from open sea, thus making launches free of political risks.
- Compactness, no need to have a well-developed ground infrastructure and its associated social support (roads, power, hotels, schools, hospitals, etc.), which radically reduces the numbers of personnel participating in the work, and, therefore, the cost of operation.
- Ability to process spacecraft for launch on the US territory (Long Beach, CA), virtually in an “urban” environment.
Being the closest marine technology company to gCaptain HQ, Sea Launch is a company that interests us greatly… we only wish we had gotten to the story sooner!
You can find MarineBuzz’s exhaustive review of SeaLaunch technology including additional photos HERE.
Related Posts:
Tags: · communication_satellite, floating_platform, ground_infrastructure, international_project, launch_system, Marine Technology, marine_technology, maritime_technology, orbit, professional_mariner, satellites, sealaunch, sea_launch, space_launch, urban_environment, zenit_3sl_rocket
Wired Ocean – Broadband Internet At Sea
We don’t usually publish press releases on gCaptain but we can’t help to be excited by new solutions for offering “High” Speed internet at sea. Marine Norway points us to this:
The introduction of FleetBroadband has pushed high-speed internet into the
marine mainstream, however, the pricing per megabyte of data puts the full
benefits of broadband usage out of reach of many vessels. Wired Ocean can
reduce the costs per megabyte of shore-to-ship FleetBroadband data to
approximately 10% by channelling the downlink through a vessel’s satellite TV
antenna.When used in conjunction with FleetBroadband, the Wired Ocean SBS brings with
it a tangible increase in downlink speed – a Wired Ocean downlink can be almost
twice the speed of a standard FB250 downlink without the Wired Ocean SBS
integrated. This makes the system ideal for high volume applications such as
internet browsing, downloading email with attachments, obtaining electronic
manuals and weather and navigation data for bridge and critical systems. Continue Reading…
Related Posts:
Tags: · communication_satellite, inmarsat, internet
gCaptain On Twitter
gCaptain On Facebook
gCaptain On LinkedIn