Guest Blogger: Wouter Deknopper, VP & GM Maritime Business
āAll You Can Eatā plans give a simple proposition to ship owners and operators. Pay monthly for your hardware and airtime, and āeatā as much data as you can. But what if your unlimited buffet is served with one item at a time? How much can you actually eat within a month? Unlimited data allowance plans work the same way. Your connectivity is throttled by the width of the bandwidth pipe. An unlimited L-band plan cannot be compared to an unlimited VSAT plan, as the VSAT bandwidths are typically larger.
Unlimited data allowance plans have a Fair Usage Policy / Fair Access Policy enforced by the Satellite Network Operators (SNO). Imagine that you and your friends have just ordered a giant margarita. Each of you place your identical straws into the glass, and the glass is emptied at the same rate. One enterprising friend puts a bigger straw into the glass, drinking the ārita quicker than everyone else thus affecting the groupās sense of fairness and possibly friendship. These policies are designed to protect the Satellite Network Operatorās (SNO) network, ensuring that users are receiving the service that they pay for. The policies place usage limitations upon unlimited plans, but vary widely across providers. Some policies are quite liberal, only restricting specific services such as BitTorrent or video streaming. Other plans are highly restrictive, preventing all but specific applications and services. Some plans even place limits upon the amount of unlimited data that can be consumed per month. Remember, unlimited doesnāt always mean unlimited ā always check the small print!
For some shipping fleets a pooled satellite airtime plan may be more appropriate than an unlimited plan. Pool plans combine the individual monthly data allowance from a number of ships. For example if a fleet comprises of 20 ships, each with 1GB data allowance per month ā the fleet data pool is 20GB. If a number of ships within the fleet use a greater amount of data each month, a number of ships are likely to use less data. Therefore, as long as the fleetās total data usage does not exceed 20GB ā no overage charges are applied. Iridium CertusSM has highly flexible pool plans, allowing even small fleets to take advantage of pooled data. In addition to pooled plans, Iridium Certus provides a variety of plans to suit most maritime requirements, such as āPay as you Goā, Short Term, Flexible, VSAT Companions and more.
Learn more about what Iridium Certus can offer you at www.IridiumCertus.com.
So you’ve decided it’s time to purchase a satellite phone. Whether you’re purchasing a satellite device for a global or off-the-grid adventure, or you’re planning ahead for an emergency, buying your first satellite phone or device can present you with many options!
Iridium offers several types of personal satellite communications devices, each with unique capabilities. To help you make the best decision for your needs, we’ve put together a simple flowchart to help you determine which Iridium satellite product is the right fit for you.
Not sure if a satellite device is right for you?Ā Check out our “Why, When, and How to Buy a Satellite Phone” blog post to help you in your research!
Click to learn more about the IridiumĀ 9555, Iridium ExtremeĀ®, and Iridium GO!Ā®, or to find a local retailer.
Guest Blogger: Dan Rooney, Director of Maritime Business
Did you ever receive a mobile phone bill that was significantly higher than expected? Your invoice should be a fixed amount each month, but there are unexpected charges on top. The memories of the previous monthās fantastic vacation are washed away faster than a sandcastle on the white sandy beach. Last month your mobile phone downloaded an update in the background, over the mobile network which resulted in unexpected data usage ā at several dollars per gigabyte.
A bill shock situation can be caused by multiple factors. A typical culprit is Microsoft updates, another is Malware activity. There are many methods that can be deployed to prevent the risk of bill shock, and your Service Provider can advise accordingly. Iridiumās maritime Service Providers have developed smart boxes that constantly monitor and manage the data passing from the vesselās networks over the satellite link. Additionally, restricting which traffic is allowed to pass over the satellite link is recommended, as operating system updates can be very large. For example, watching funny cat clips on YouTube may pass away a long sea passage, but transferring video can consume a very large amount of data quickly. Movie quality on our computers has radically improved over the past years, moving from jerky low- resolution movies up to 4K Ultra HD. Higher resolution movies require faster network connections to stream the content. Just to put that into context, a standard definition (480p) movie would need around 0.5 to 1 Mb/s. A 4K resolution movie would need around 15Mb/s. Although these numbers vary depending upon the Internet service providing the content, they give an indication of the high bandwidth needed for video streaming. In our funny cat-clip example, watching 10 minutes of 480p content will result in transferring around 300MB. Entertaining for sure, but not when your monthly data allowance is 250MB! Video and audio streaming services should always be restricted, especially on a volume-based satellite service, and our Iridium Service Partners can assist with this.
Bill shock has affected most ship owners and operators at one point. Communications budgets for a fleet are carefully calculated annually, with some tolerance of variation over the year. Volume plans for L-band and VSAT are designed to offer a fixed allowance of data monthly. This can be delivered either per ship or across a fleet (pooled). Unless there are strict controls enforced, with regular shore-side monitoring of data consumed by a ship, there is a real risk of runaway invoices causing high blood pressure. Bill shock can also affect (unlimited) VSAT equipped ships, especially if the VSAT is offline.
Iridium CertusSM simply gives more megabytes for less dollars. If a ship exceeds its monthly allowance, the overage is a low cost per MB that reduces the impact of bill shock. Iridium also provides numerous subscriptions that allow monthly data allowances to be shared across a shipping company.
Learn more about what Iridium Certus can offer you at www.IridiumCertus.com.