Page 24: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (October 1998)

SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS data rate can be combined into a figure called Performance

Advantage, representing savings to the customer taking into account the price and speed differ- ence between HSD, MSD, and

LSD.

There are some investment costs involved to use or to convert to this service. This is particularly true for high speed data, which requires, in addition to a data capable Inmarsat-B terminal, an

ISDN telephone line and an ISDN terminal adapter. The costs for this, including the terminal, are approximately:

Standard B Terminal S30,000 - 540,000

ISDN Terminal Adapter 51,00

ISDN phone line 550 - 5200 monthly

The customer must have the data network and traffic in place to justify these up-front costs. The chart represents the pay-back peri- od for installing a high speed data network assuming an outlay of $45,000 (see chart, previous page).

For a high volume user of 10 million bytes (10 MB) per day, this would equate to 20-25 pages of detailed graphics, the cost of start- ing a HSD network is recouped in about 83 days. In addition, approx- imately 210 hours of transmission time will be saved.

Those users of Inmarsat-A ter- minals interested in even more savings may wish to convert their

Inmarsat-A terminals to Inmarsat-

Bs, rather than purchase new ter- minals. Hughes Technical Services

Co., for example, offers upgrade kits for Magnavox and Nera termi- nals that cost about $25,000 each.

Upgrading not only can save money on equipment costs, but also saves on installation costs for the new terminal. The new versus conversion decision should be con- sidered carefully, taking into account the condition of the exist- ing Inmarsat-A terminals.

Many mobile data customers have already recognized the cost- savings and versatility of B data. "It is transportable, economical to use, easy to operate and provides flexible and timely data communi- cations," says Bill Gumert, chief geophysicist Aerogravity Division of Carson Services, Inc. "B termi- nals are superior because of better throughput and have a simple duplex set-up. They are a lot easi- er for us than A terminals." As for

COMSAT's service, Mr. Gumert added, "We used to try all kinds of things ... such as trying to copy all of our information on a diskette or data tape, and paying a bush pilot $50 to deliver it to a commercial pilot who could bring it home to us.

In some places we could suc- cessfully do that, even though it took several days. Sometimes we were 300 miles from the nearest community and it was impossible to get our information out. And, if we were in a remote location or experience an emergency, we were in trouble. We really needed this type of satellite communication, and now we have it." To keep mar- itime businesses competitive, ves- sels need the capability to simply, reliably and cost-effectively send and receive large amounts of data, regardless of location. COMSAT-B digital service is designed to allow ships at sea to do this, along with high quality voice communica- tions. It supports full-duplex high speed data and 64 kbps with con- nections to the ISDN network.

Paul Stern is the Marketing

Manager of Government &

Commercial Services at COMSAT

Mobile Communications.

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