Inmarsat, the world’s leading provider of marine satellite services, recently announced the development of multi-satellite voice capability via the Fleet Broadband (FBB) terminals to delegates at Nor-Shipping in Oslo, Norway – one of the maritime industries biggest conference and exhibition events. Mariners will soon be able to access up to nine lines from a single FBB terminal enabling them to make up to nine simultaneous Voice calls from that one terminal
Planned for commercial roll-out in the last quarter of 2011, ths multi-voice capability will also be available on ALL new marine satellite services terminals as well.
“The power of the BGAN network that underpins FleetBroadband is that it has the flexibility and the capability to allow us to introduce new offerings such as this,” said James Collett, Inmarsat’s senior director of maritime business. “Ship owners and managers will be able to access up to nine telephone lines from a single terminal, allowing them to assign telephone lines for specific requirements, and to more easily separate the business and operational communications needs from those of the crew. Each line will have its own +870 telephone number. We believe this service will be particularly beneficial for crew communications,” Collett concludes.
At a suggested retail price of US$0.55 per minute, the cost of calls using this new service will highly competitive in the marketplace. The SRP applies to existing and new activations, and for both pre-paid and post-paid calls.
“We have announced this new SRP because we believe there remains an opportunity to grow both operational and crew voice traffic,” Collett goes on to say. “ We are seeing more use of email and data communications on the marine satellite services terminals, but there is evidence that shows people will call more when the price point is appropriate.”