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Tell us a little about yourself. Pearson I have been the General Manager of ea Tel since July of 200. Prior to that I worked for 23 years at ewlett Packard and its test and measurement spin-off, Agilent Technologies. At P, I worked in finance, mar- keting, operations and several times as a Division General Manager. How would you describe your management philosophy Pearson What I learned at P was that when you create the right environment the right things will happen. In- ternally, this means setting clear obectives, measuring progress, knocking down barriers and building on suc- cess. Working with our customers and suppliers this means that we want to be a good business partner where we work towards creating win win situations. Both of these depend on being forthright on surfacing issues and being proactive at solving problems. Put in perspective the way in which the maritime commu- nity uses satellite communication services today versus just 10 years ago? Pearson The maritime satellite industry is following the same trend line as mobile cellular and broadband whereend users expectation?s for communications are moving from wanting occasional connectivity to being both ubiq- uitous and also a fundamental requirement to accomplishmany must-do activities. Where do you see opportunities for growth in your sector? Pearson All sectors are seeing growth as the demand for bandwidth increases exponentially over time. Because the utilization of high bandwidth communications createpositive feedbacks (the more you have the more you use and get the benefit of) the demand is growing fastest where bandwidth utilization is highest such as in oil andgas markets. In your opinion, what has been the biggest driver for im- proved satcom services between ship and shore? Pearson The driver is level or number of mission critical business processes being supported. The more mission critical the communications circuit, the more investment is made in having high quality system components, re- dundancy and network margin or tolerance environmen- tal performance degradation. From one perspective this would tend to increase costs, however by optimizing the total cost of ownership and by applying total quality man- agement techniques it is possible to increase reliabilitywhile actually reducing costs.What trends do you see today that you believe will funda- mentally change the market in the coming decade? Pearson As the market grows and matures it will natu- rally move toward consolidation where larger companies can use scale advantages to deliver services more con- sistently and at lower overall costs. This is not to say that there is not a place for innovation, it?s ust that the suc- cessful innovators will bring new value to market and cre- ate new reasons for utilizing satcom at sea. How is business shaping up for 2011 and beyond? Pearson We have strong demand for our one meter VAT, the xx0 series, as well as our large 2. meter C band and u band systems. The recovery in global trade and as well as strong oil process are the also help stimu-late demand.What do you count as the leading technical challenges to making SatCom services even faster and more reliable? Pearson To get to faster and more reliable services re- quires two parallel activities. Faster is driven by new technology as seen in the sophistication of hubs andmodems and also by the amount of available bandwidth from the satellite operators. Both are increasing in pacewith the end user demand for more bandwidth. Increasedreliability can be achieved through the development and implementation of standards. tandardization activities can apply to many aspects of the industry from proper in- stallation to service life testing to data collection for trou-bleshooting procedures and so on. These standards can be open, proprietary or a mixture of both, what?s is im- portant is to bring people together to eliminate commonproblems. What challenges (outside technical) do you face to in- crease your penetration in this market? Pearson Everyone benefits from reducing the total cost of ownership as achieving it frees time and money that can be better spent on growing the overall size of the mar- itime satcom market. We are doing many things to help reduce total cost of ownership from introducing lower priced products to improving remote management tools. How is your company investing today to better serve the maritime market? Pearson ea Tel is working closely with Inmarsat and iDirect to develop the terminal for the Inmarsat Global xPress service in 2013. G will grow the overall market by offering greater bandwidth in a smaller terminal. Rick PearsonGeneral Manager, Sea Tel Modern maritime communications are essential to safe, efficient op- erations. Sea Tel?s Rick Pearson shares with MR his thoughts on maintaining contact between ship and shore. INTERVIEWFIVE MINUTES WITH RICK PEARSON, SEA TEL