Brent Bruun, executive vice president of KVH Industries outlined how satellite communications can provide real value to ship operations in one of the most challenging periods in maritime history.
“The KVH ‘Power of One’ approach holds tremendous value and promise for the maritime world,” Bruun claimed. “While satellite communications tend to account for less than 1% of ship operating costs, they are the lynchpin of optimising the remainder of the operating cost equation.”
Mike Mitsock, KVH’s vice president of marketing, catalogued the major areas for potential operating cost savings and the role of KVH and its partners in focusing on big data to address each area. “The optimisation of significant operational costs, such as fuel, through such measures as route planning and engine maintenance, can lead to sustainably lower overall costs,” he said.
Citing an example from MISC, Mitsock described further evidence of operational cost reductions. The ship operator recently credited improvements in maritime training supplied by Videotel, part of KVH Industries, with contributing to a 10% saving in drydocking costs and a 9% reduction in MISC’s vessel operating costs.
Connectivity is also a significant factor in crew retention, he said, using evidence from a Crew Connectivity 2015 Survey report by Futurenautics, which said that “73% of respondents said that the level of crew communications services provided on board did influence their decisions about which shipping company they worked for.”
According to Bruun, shipowners and shipmanagers are realising that transferring volumes of shore-to-ship data or multimedia content on a daily basis is made practical and cost-effective by using KVH’s efficient multicasting service, IP-MobileCast.
The content delivery service allows mini-VSAT Broadband customers who subscribe to receive news, sports, and entertainment content with no data transmission costs.