Navigating Starlink Disruption in the Maritime Connectivity Market

In the maritime sector, for many years, the long-sought “Treasure Island” of connectivity could be summed up in four words: As good as shore.

“We would always ask, can we get as good as shore connectivity? Can we have a broadband connection on board the vessel? That’s what we termed as the best connectivity, in the past,” says Karthikeyan Arumugam, the vessel connectivity & IoT solutions lead for AP Moller-Maersk, one of the world’s largest container shipping companies.

Arumugam’s business unit provides on-board connectivity to Maersk’s 350 owned container ships and nearly 200 long term charter vessels.

But these days, as good as shore isn’t the best, it’s the baseline, Arumugam says, because Maersk is in the midst of an on-board digital transformation of its fleet.

“While certain applications need to be maintained shipboard for visibility or compliance, we have a vision where we need to move our applications to the cloud,” he tells Via Satellite. The move to the cloud will “reduce our ongoing operational costs or increase efficiency, enable a centralized managed approach, give us flexibility,” he says.

Cloud applications require more resilient, always-on connectivity with an uptime of at least 99.5 percent, Arumugam says. “Our goal is what we call a ‘floating vessel office,’” he explained, “making sure that you have bandwidth available to do what’s needed, whenever the vessel needs it.”

The company had developed a platform called One SATCOM, which uses software-defined networking technology (SD-WAN) to connect onboard systems via a broad array of connectivity deals with different providers. Arumugam says it uses Ku- and Ka-band VSAT, Low-Earth Orbit (LEO), and 4G and 5G, explaining that multiple connections allowed One SATCOM to “load balance” between different channels.

“If one connection breaks down, then that traffic is flipped to the second connection,” he says.

Maersk may be ahead in this transformation, but they’re not alone.

State-of-the-art container vessels are now using artificial intelligence to make real-time decisions based on data from cameras, sensors and radar, says James Trevelyan, executive vice president for global sales at communications and IT services provider Speedcast. “These systems would not function effectively without always-on connectivity,” he says.

A Digital Revolution at Sea

Indeed, the whole merchant marine sector is undergoing something of a digital revolution, according to Despina Panayiotou Theodosiou, co-CEO of Tototheo, a maritime connectivity and technology services leader.

She says that while merchant shipping was notorious for being technologically conservative, that narrative is changing. “We see many changes coming because of the advancements in LEO [connectivity]. We see a great uptake of digital solutions from merchant shipping. We also see a lot of investment in IT infrastructure on board ships.”

Powering that revolution, and bringing the goal of the floating vessel office within reach, is the bandwidth explosion in satellite connectivity over the past few years driven, above all, by Starlink, but with competing LEO constellations close behind.

In maritime, the most surprising thing about Starlink, Theodosiou says, was the speed of uptake. In less than two years, Starlink had transformed the market.

“We did not expect this rapid change,” in the traditionally change-resistant merchant maritime sector, she acknowledges. “We were used to customers needing some time to adapt. That was definitely not the case with Starlink.”

“They are disrupting the industry but that's not necessarily a bad thing,” Theodosiou says, adding that Tototheo now sells Starlink, “They are doing a great job at present for us as service providers.”

She attributes the speed of adoption to the low price point of the service and the hardware, and the ease of installation, saying it is easier and more cost efficient than traditional satcom.

Starlink hardware is roughly one third to one quarter the cost of a traditional satellite antenna, says Joshua Flood, a senior consultant at Valour, a provider of technology market intelligence. In addition, he pointed out that Starlink doesn’t require two or three days in dock and the specialized labor to install it.

Valour cites that Starlink had achieved 25 percent market penetration of satellite-connected vessels in less than two years.

“That’s incredible,” Flood says, especially given how “tribal and fragmented” the maritime market is between different sectors.

But if Starlink is bringing the price points and ease-of-installation of consumer broadband to the maritime sector, it’s also bringing with it some compromises from the consumer market.

Satellite is traditionally sold to enterprises with committed information rates, meaning guarantees about bandwidth, speed and availability, Flood tells Via Satellite. Starlink doesn't offer guarantees or service level agreements. Notoriously, it doesn’t have so much as a customer service phone line, even for business customers.

So far this hasn’t seemed to slow uptake, Flood says. “They haven't committed to anything, but the levels of service and speed that they’ve provided have been outstanding.”

All that extra bandwidth had been a game changer, says Moacyr Camilotti, the director of connectivity solutions at cruise giant Carnival Corporation, “It’s had a huge impact, for sure.”

In the social media age, the ability to post about an experience is key to enjoying it for many travelers, and broadband connectivity is not a nice-to-have add-on for Carnival’s more than two-dozen ships in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific Islands.

“Our need for connectivity is all about a home-like experience for our guests and crew,” Camilotti told a panel at SATELLITE 2024 earlier this year, which featured maritime and aviation end users.

Camilotti said Carnival was also working on a “vendor neutral solution” for satellite connectivity like Maersk’s One SATCOM, to be implemented on all Carnival cruise lines ships by 2025.

Flood says that the maritime and cruise market was a “Brucie bonus” for Starlink, referencing the catch phrase of British game show host Bruce Forsyth.

Starlink had built a globe-spanning constellation to serve the terrestrial market, but while those satellites were over the oceans, they were an under-utilized resource, Flood explains. Selling that unused bandwidth to ocean-going vessels made good business sense for Starlink, but it wasn’t part of the company’s core market strategy.

Cruise lines like Carnival have been able to capitalize as well. “The moment you get on board a Carnival vessel, they will try to sell you a data package,” Flood says. Smartphone-hungry passengers are a huge, deep well of demand that cruise lines can monetize. “Any bandwidth they can get from Starlink or anywhere else, they can flip it, with a markup, straight to the passengers.”

Multi-Orbit Will Change the Provider-User Relationship

Starlink, along with other innovations in the satcom ecosystem could usher in a a new multi-orbit and multi-provider era that could radically shift the balance of power between providers and users, says Maersk’s Arumugam.

“When you get a connection from one provider, then you're pretty much dependent on them,” he says. Proprietary technology in the below deck equipment like antennas, modems and routers, locks satcom users in.

“When we want to migrate to another service provider or another technology, then suddenly we find the antenna is not compatible or the routers are not compatible. [Replacing them] is an immense expense for a company like us where we have 300 to 400 vessels that we’re sailing globally. And it’s a pain,” Arumugam says.

Maersk’s One SATCOM platform, using virtualized infrastructure, and multiple pre-installed antennas, can sometimes onboard a new provider with just an over the air software update, Arumugam says, or with a few small hardware changes “That the crew can do, without having to take the vessel to port and get a crane and all that stuff.”

The One SATCOM multi-provider model has created an ecosystem of suppliers, he says, effectively competing against each other on price and service to supply bandwidth to Maersk’s fleet.

Maersk designed One SATCOM to get past the pain of vendor lock-in, and others want to as well. Theodosiou says Tototheo is seeing an uptick in demand for hybrid connectivity solutions.

“Ship owners and ship operators are trying to find what works best for them. That doesn't mean one solution anymore.” Although the days of a one-size-fits-all solution are over, she says that increasing demand for hybrid solutions is an opportunity for service providers, “The value we bring is orchestration of these different networks, which can be very diverse; and the management of that in order for our customers to get the best.”

Maritime satellite service providers are facing the same changes other sectors are confronting, explained Theodosiou. “The link is becoming commoditized,” she says, “What we have to do is provide a better experience for our own customers, a more seamless experience.” Just selling bandwidth wouldn’t cut it any more, she says, “That's how the model is changing from now on. We need to innovate and provide value add for our customers.”

That includes applications to let crew members do remote monitoring and other safety activities more conveniently, she says.

Some crew members with special skills might not need to be on board at all, says Trevelyan, but could monitor multiple vessels remotely from a single location.

However, at least for the time being, the most important application for on board connectivity on most merchant vessels is the crew, says Flood.

“Sadly, that means the quality of the service provided is often determined by the ease of replacement lor the level of training” of the crew, Flood says. Oil or LNG tankers, which required certified or trained crew, typically offered high bandwidth connections, often at no charge. At the other end of the scale, bulk containers, with the lowest skilled and most easily replaceable crew tended to offer the bare minimum in terms of connectivity.

Regulated Markets, Legacy Providers

Despite its market penetration, Starlink won’t be replacing established maritime satellite providers anytime soon, experts say. For the time being it will remain an add-on, though a welcome one. “In most maritime segments, [Starlink and other LEO] is a compliment to the connectivity suite we’re delivering,” says Speedcast exec Trevelyan.

Different users on the vessels have “differing needs and application requirements,” he says, adding, “A single closed network LEO service may not meet the mark.”

Besides, licensing rules and other regulations currently require most commercial vessels to have some sort of safety-certified connection, usually provided by Iridium or Inmarsat, according to Flood.

In the coming world of hybrid connectivity, he says, network orchestration technology will be key for end users, tying multiple modes of data transport together.

Carnival is still looking for intelligent provisioning technology, says Camilotti, where a ship’s satellite terminal would be able, based on the route programmed and other data, to “identify the best provider for that region where you're sailing, and choose that provider.”

On a cruise ship, intelligent provisioning would also need “to be smart enough to understand how the experience is on board and then take the right actions to optimize that,” he says.

But networking decisions like intelligent provisioning are only the tip of the iceberg of use cases for automation and AI on connected vessels, according to maritime service providers.

There are many potential applications for AI, from remote monitoring for safety or convenience, says Theodosiou. Tototheo does software development and will soon begin testing AI applications. She noted that AI for core industries like merchant shipping is governed by the EU Artificial Intelligence Act.

“We’re very excited about the prospects, but we also need to be a little bit careful, especially with merchant shipping,” she says. “We have to be very careful about how we're using applications for our customers.” VS