Category: Blog

DigiGone, your “secure” solution for low bandwidth connections via mobile satellite communications.

Does your Mobile Satellite Communication bandwidth require a secure solution? More and more Inmarsat BGAN Service customers are discovering the secrets of Diginonymous’ range of DigiGon solutions. Recently we spoke with George Spohn, one of the firm’s key players, to find out why the company is attracting so much attention.

In order to appreciate the features of DigiGone one must first know something about its founder. Mike Dunleavy served with the United State Air force, going on to become a Special Agent for the Office of Special Investigation. He then moved to the Air Force Reserve, became a lieutenant in the police force supervising technical surveillance teams and law enforcement operations. After seeing active duty following 9/11, Mike retired from the Air Force Reserve and applied his skills to forming two companies dealing with the protection of people, property and information.

Born of the frustration of not being able to find secure communications that met his needs, Dunleavy decided to set up a company and create his own secure communication capability. In 2007 he founded Diginonymous. He brought together the talents of several fellow retired counter intelligence and counter espionage agents and hired a team of software engineers. They created the DigiGone range of encrypted and anonymous satellite internet browsing and mobile satellite communication solutions.

Now president of the Diginonymous, Dunleavy approached George Spohn of Thrane & Thrane and persuaded him to become the company’s vice-president of global sales and marketing. It was the merging of these two men’s talents that proved a real turning point for the firm, because George realized that one of the biggest benefits of the DigiGone software platform is that users can control mobile satellite communication bandwidth thereby controlling their costs. “DigiGone enables users to perform a variety of tasks – from multi-party video conferencing, video streaming, texting and file transfer – at the lowest possible shared Standard IP bandwidth, allowing them to control costs,” said Spohn.

“So, for example, instead of using expensive video-conferencing technology installed in set locations, users can hold a video conference using BGAN satellite terminals linked to their laptops, setting the bandwidth at a maximum of just 60kbps. It can be set up within minutes and existing users can easily transfer the half a megabyte DigiGone software by email to new contacts with whom they wish to hold a video conference. During the video conference the solution will never exceed the 60kbps set – instead it will continually monitor the necessary bandwidth, operating at a lower one whenever possible, which in this instance might be only 40kbps.”

Every customer wants the capability to communicate from anywhere at anytime but they are all wary of the cost. When it comes to cost, the most significant variable to control is bandwidth cost. “This is where DigiGone can play a key role because it allows users to control both the costs and the quality of transmissions”, says Spohn.

Other DigiGone solutions also include:

DigiGone Mobile Chat – which allows executives travelling on ships, yachts or business jets equipped with Inmarsat services to communicate securely with anyone in the world using the wi-fi on their Microsoft Windows-based smartphones.

Secure Identity Software – an add-on capability to DigiGone PC chat software which gives users the ability to surf the web anonymously, encrypt and decrypt files and folders, wipe files and folders and perform remotely encrypted back-ups and store encrypted files.

“Our sales have grown by 50 per cent year-on-year – mostly through Inmarsat partners who are distributing the solutions to customers and resellers, and we are keen to hear from others who are interested in the DigiGone range,” said Spohn. “We have put together brochures and presentations for a total of 23 different markets for DigiGone solutions – including some totally new to mobile satellite communications.”

DEADLIEST CATCH Captain Sig Hansen can’t say enough good things about the Thrane & Thrane Fleetbroadband 500 marine satellite services terminal currently operational on his 126 foot crabber, the Northwestern. Risking life and limb working the treacherous and unpredictable waters of the Bearing Sea, Captain Hansen and his crew rely on the revolutionary technology afforded by the Fleetbroadband 500 marine satellite services terminal to find and catch king and snow crabs faster, stay in touch with family and friends and, perhaps most importantly, keep them out of harms way. “If I had to go back to fishing without Fleetbroadband I’d feel like I was taking 10 steps back – life would be pretty tough,” says Captain Sig.

The Northwestern can carry up to 90,720kg (200,000lb) of crab worth more than $1 million US dollars. The FBB500 allows the crew to maximize their time at sea by providing them with “real time” access to online weather forecasts for the Bering Sea, which lies west of Alaska and just south of the Arctic Circle. “It can be flat calm one minute and then blowing 50 or 60 knots the next. I’ve seen waves up to 21m (70 feet) and that can be terrifying,” says Sig. “If you have a great distance to travel to get to safety in that kind of weather every second counts, so you need to know the weather forecast as soon as possible.”

The Fleetbroadband 500 has given Sig a unique and valuable advantage over competitors too – the ability to constantly keep in touch with buyers. In the old days (prior to the FBB500) Captain Sig would head for whichever port was offering the best price. Some processors have now started accepting deliveries “at sea” so Sig uses the satellite service to keep tabs on these buyers to ensure he reaches them before his competitors do.

Crab fishing is incredibly dangerous and it’s not unusual for seafarers to get injured as they wrestle with 363kg (800lb) steel crab pots or cut themselves on the knives they use. He’s glad to have the satellite technology aboard as a reliable channel for medical advice when there’s an emergency too. “If necessary, I can do a videoconference and show the doctor the injury. He can actually see the wound and tell us what to do,” says Sig.

When members of the crew are off-duty, Fleetbroadband performs another vital role. It helps lift the morale of the six-man crew by enabling them to phone home, or interface their laptops to the vessel’s wi-fi network to send emails or use the internet.

For the third time the organizers of the Volvo Ocean Round the World Race, the world’s most prestigious yacht race, have again selected Inmarsat Services to deliver essential satellite voice and data connectivity, broadcast quality HDTV and rich multi-media content necessary to relay all the action and drama to millions of fans across the globe. As an official Race Partner, Inmarsat Services will be responsible for key elements of the contest, including but not limited to, GPS position reporting of the yachts and safety communications, as well as supporting crew morale by enabling them to stay connected with friends and family via voice and email.

Starting in early November 2011 from Alicante, Spain the race is anticipated to take 9 months covering more than 39,000 miles, concluding in Galway, Ireland the following July. Each yacht will have a specialist non-sailing media crew member (MCM) whose specific responsibility will be to beam pertinent vessel and crew data to race HQ via the Inmarsat marine satellite services Fleet Broadband terminal on board. Due to this state of the art real time availability of information the coming race is expected to be the most keenly and closely watched in its history.

The MCMs are already training for the race having recently visited Inmarsat’s network operations and satellite control centers where they witnessed live demonstrations of how their video, photographic and email reports will be delivered. “This was the first time the MCMs had ever visited Inmarsat and they really gained an understanding of how the company works and the breadth of the services it offers,” said Mark Covell, an MCM for Team Russia in the last Volvo Ocean Race, who accompanied the new intake around Inmarsat. “With seven months to go before the race starts, it was a great opportunity for everyone to begin to gain a thorough understanding of just what they can deliver using FleetBroadband. This visit, together with extensive training and preparation, will help them unleash the full power of the service to bring the very latest drama and excitement of the race to a global audience,” Mark went on to say.

Knut Frostad, chief executive officer of the Volvo Ocean Race, said: “FleetBroadband has proved it can deliver a flawless performance in tough conditions and that is absolutely essential for us. We need to be able to get reliable and high quality material off the boats and deliver it to the world with immediacy. You could say that the DNA of the Volvo Ocean Race is really based around moving images. And to be able to transmit these images from the boats is core to our communication and story building around the race. In many ways, Inmarsat’s FleetBroadBand has revolutionized the sport of offshore sailing. And by enabling us to be so connected to the boats, we can monitor those 24 hours a day from our Control Room in Alicante. This is crucial for our safety procedures and the onboard safety equipment is a vital tool for the crew in emergency situations.”

Each70 foot Volvo Open racing yacht will be equipped with a Thrane & Thrane Sailor FleetBroadband 500 terminal capable of providing voice and high-speed data communications. Also onboard will be the smaller more compact version Thrane & Thrane Sailor FleetBroadband 150. The 150 will be used exclusively for crew voice calling and IP data.

Each vessel will also be fitted with two Sailor Mini-C systems which will provide constant positioning data and global safety communications. For the first time ever the race will have the opportunity to use Inmarsat’s new global handheld satellite phone, IsatPhone Pro, which will be included in the boats’ safety kit.

The leading provider of worldwide mobile satellite communications services, Inmarsat, just announced the availability of a data service on the iSatPhone Pro satellite phone. This new circuit switched data enhancement will now support data rates up to 20kbps.

“IsatPhone Pro is ideally suited for use as a data service,” said Drew Brandy, Director of Land Services at Inmarsat. “The handset design means the IsatPhone Pro satellite phone can be simply placed on its side with the antenna extended for connection to the satellite while a micro USB cable connects it to a PC.

“We are very pleased with the performance of IsatPhone Pro’s data capability. It is proving to be very robust whether using generic or customised applications. In testing we have actually exceeded 20kbps throughput with plain text email on several occasions. It’s ideal for those people wanting to access emails, jpegs, documents or PDFs,” he said.

“IsatPhone Pro Satellite Phone has achieved a great deal since it was launched barely nine months ago: winning an award for innovation, gathering fantastic reviews and being used in every single country in which satellite communications is authorised,” said Drew. “But, as today’s announcement shows, we don’t stop looking for ways to enhance the service for our end users. We expect this new data capability to be very well received.”

The BGAN service provides a remote solution in the Andes for a new prototype body sensor for use in high altitude environments. This data was transmitted via BGAN back to a location in France. This evaluation went on for 3 weeks as these sensors were put to the test on the summit of Mount Aconcagua in the Andes Cordillera, Argentina.

These new body sensors are manufactured by BodySens in Nimes and were tested by French climbers Valerie Miouze, Catrine Millier, Christophe Augier, Pascal Siedel and Marc Batard who reached the summit of Aconcagua summit at 22,841ft on February 18th. The BGAN service was used during their sojourn to report both scientific data from the sensor being worn and to provide information to the French media.

The climbers kept these small wireless Active Protection Personal Instruments in the hoods of their coats. The device measured heart rate, blood oxygen levels and the locations of the climbers. BodySens is also proud to have recorded the highest altitude electrocardiogram (ECG) ever taken on land during the climb using a small device called EPI Life which can be held in the palm of a hand.

Team Project manager Anthony Mazeau said the expedition had many radio, TV and web media partners to communicate with in addition to transmitting back to BodySens.

“They ran a full range of experiments on the human body’s response to altitude,” explained Anthony.

“They were helping BodySens develop sensors able to record and store the data, which included measurements on lung function (spirometry), heart rate (during exertion and when resting), arterial blood pressure and muscle volume loss due to altitude.”

A BGAN Explorer 700 was supplied for the expedition to transmit the data along with a solar charger to power the mobile satellite system. Anthony added: “The choice of the BGAN service ensured that lightweight, robust and compact equipment could be used with relatively inexpensive airtime, which was an important part of the original brief.”

Light users in new sectors to benefit from Marine Satellite Services pricing

Inmarsat has just announced new Fleetbroadband marine satellite services pricing packages that focus on the smaller fishing and leisure vessels.

“These plans will help Inmarsat and its partners tap into new and growing markets for light marine vessels,” said Kyle Hurst, Inmarsat’s maritime market manager.

He explained: “The plans, which were launched on 1 April, are designed to appeal to users who are fairly conservative in their requirements for data and voice, sporadic in their use and typically are regionally constrained in their use.”

Marine Satellite Services pricing plans will provide:

• Capped bills – controlling costs and limiting bills to specific daily, monthly amounts
• Shorter durations – month at a time pricing plans
• Inmarsat’s new on-net pricing – more affordable satcom to satcom calls.
• Applicability for all data types – focus on much lighter fleetbroadband users who want to send/receive a small amount of data like e-logs.

Kyle said: “These plans are designed to appeal to users who, up until now, may have been interested in using Fleetbroadband but were wary about the commitment involved.

“They are prepared to pay a certain amount every month, but they want value-added services that provide strict controls and limits on utilisation and therefore cost.

“We believe that these plans offer partners a great opportunity to break into new maritime markets.”

Just a dot on the vast map of Indonesia, the Mentawai Islands are no less vulnerable to nature’s wrath as tsunamis in 2004 and 2010 proved. The latest tsunami struck the islands of Sipora, Pagai Utara and Pagai Seletan in October 2010 as a three-metre (nine-foot) wave swept through 20 villages, killing at least 435 people and leaving 20,000 homeless.

The Inmarsat constellation, the worldwide leader in mobile satellite communications supported essential data and video footage using airtime and equipment supplied by TDCOM – a subsidiary of Inmarsat distribution partner Vizada. Inmarsat-sponsored Télécoms Sans Frontières (TSF) was one of the first on the scene, establishing Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN Service) equipped communication centers and providing IsatPhone Pro Satellite Phone for voice calls in the field.

Realizing that the islands needed their own emergency telecommunication facilities, Justin Waller, TSF manager for the Indonesia project, said: “There is a lack of communication infrastructure on the islands, with landlines and mobiles only covering the major towns. Our project was designed to improve the communications capability of local organizations involved in disaster response.”

TSF provided portable BGAN Service kits as well as a range of other sat com equipment, the cost of which was born by the Humanitarian Aid department of the European Commission (ECHO). The two largest kits established a communications hub to operate at the center of a future disaster response. These were given to Indonesia’s local government disaster response organisation – BPBD Mentawai – and to a major Indonesian non-governmental organization (NGO), Air Putih.

The larger kits contained:

• IsatPhone Pro handheld satellite terminal plus an IsatDock docking station, antenna and 20 meters of cabling
• BGAN Explorer 500 terminal
• Wireless router
• Notebook computer
• Multi-purpose fax, scanner, copier and printer
• Durable Pelican transport case
• GSM modem, SIM card and credit
• Honda portable electricity generator
• Documentation, software and system restore facility on a USB key.

  Four smaller kits containing just an IsatPhone Pro satellite phone and an IsatDock docking station and cabling were supplied for use by other organizations, as were 19 IsatPhone Pro handsets. A substantial airtime credit, valid for four years, was also included. The smaller kits were deployed to several local organizations, including three local health centers run by the district health authority.

Waller added: “The kits and training have been delivered to organizations with the capability of both looking after the equipment and sustaining the skills to use it. All these organizations have operations that extend over the islands and the equipment will be distributed throughout all four of them. Early feedback from organizations has been positive – particularly as regards the IsatPhone Pro.”

South American Adventurers “Protected” with mobile satellite communication.

Perhaps better known as the “last wild race”, the 2011 Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race takes competitors on the annual 10-day challenge, routing them on a secret and isolated route across plains, mountain glaciers, forests and lakes – on foot and by Kayak and mountain bike. The 15 teams were given general, landmark-oriented instructions for the route on the night before the start of the race.

Inmarsat, the world’s leading provider of mobile satellite communications, was chosen by race organizers to provide portable satellite emergency communications equipment and service for the race competitors. Participants are forbidden the use of modern navigational aids such as GPS.

Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN Service) terminals and handheld portable IsatPhone Pro satellite phones, supplied by a local Inmarsat Service Provider, enabled race officials stationed at the checkpoints throughout the course to stay in touch with other. BGAN satellite terminals were also used to relay information back to the official race Headquarters in Punta Arenas, for distribution to Twitter and Facebook feeds, the race website and Chilean and international media.

Held last February, the race was won by British team Adidas Terrex / Prunesco, who claimed their third consecutive victory after completing the course with two days to spare. They endured some of the toughest conditions in the event’s history, including high winds and torrential rain. Eight teams failed even to finish.

“This is an amazing race that tests endurance, skill and determination, and we’re proud to be a part of it,” said Kate Montgomery, Inmarsat land services manager in the Americas. “The event brings together many of the conditions that our clients experience in their everyday business, which makes this an exciting testing ground for our services.” For this reason, mobile satellite communications was chosen as a second line of defense for redundancy communications

The iSatPhone Pro satellite phone with up to 8 hours of talk time and 100 hours in standby mode operates via the reliable Inmarsat satellite network. The iSatPhone Pro Satellite phone offers the lowest per minute rates in the industry and now the phone is data capable. Now with the help of OCEN’s Mail and OCENS WeatherNet services, the lower bandwidth of the this phone is faster and transformed into a data ready device to be used anywhere on the planet.

iSatPhone data services transmits at a rate that moves about 10 Kilobytes (about half of the information in this blog post) in 60 seconds. Compared to terrestrial data services and other high speed satellite devices like the BGAN service, this is relatively slow, however with compression via OCENS Mail, transmission speeds are up to 15 times faster. Faster data speeds through compression, translates to more cost effective airtime and an overall time savings to free up your schedule to complete other tasks. OCENS Mail is so impressive that Inmarsat used the service in the original beta testing of the phone. OCENS Mail and WeatherNet are compaticle with Windows 7, Vista and XP however the iSatPhone Pro Satellite Phone does not yet work with Mac OS.

Many of our maritime customers require weather information and ocean data; WeatherNet is the ideal solution. Weather charts, route information and other fishing info could take up to 15 minutes to download with bandwidth @ 10Kbps. However, WeatherNet automatically compresses and downloads this information in a fraction of the time. The OCENS Mail service and WeatherNet both provide a software guru which walks you through the iSatPhone Pro set up on your computer which also installs drivers for the satellite phone on your PC

Firmware on the IsatPhone must be upgraded to version 4 in order to enable the data services.. Here is the International Satellite Services Video via OCENS on how to perform this upgrade

The company TelAstra was commissioned by Inmarsat to run an independant study of the iSatPhone Pro Satellite Phone to compare it with 2 other handheld satellite phones on the market, the Iridium 9555 and the Thuraya XT. All three phones were tested over a 2 month period in 16 different countries. This evaluation was conducted by Roger Rush who is an independent satellite communications consultant with over 45 years industry experience.

Roger tested the IsatPhone Pro Satellite phone against the competition and used the following 6 criteria. It was determined by this evaluation that the iSatPhone Pro Satellite Phone is the “ultimate combination”

1. Global coverage
2. Robust handset
3. Clear voice quality
4. Reliable network connection
5. Long battery life
6. Easy to use