Page 25: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (June 2014)

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By several third-party measures, Harris

CapRock has continued to increase mar- ket share in both energy and maritime markets, demonstrating our corporate commitment to these customers. As a

Fortune 500 company specializing in communications, one of Harris’ differen- tiators is the enormous breadth and depth of expertise we offer our clients in all forms of communications, not just sat- ellite. We have helped many customers architect their entire end-to-end service, inclusive of terrestrial, WAN, LAN, sat- ellite, and other wireless links.

We also bring unique innovation to the market, both technical innovation and business innovation. Examples of tech- nology innovation include the previously mentioned Advanced VSAT offering.

We have also stood up the largest global mobility network running the latest gen- eration of TDMA satellite technology us- ing iDirect. We have recently installed the very ? rst O3bMaritime antennas and service for Royal Caribbean, offering an unprecedented 500 times the bandwidth to a single ship than has typically been available. Our direct involvement with putting hardware on new satellites such as Inmarsat Global Xpress and Iridium

NEXT, communication packages on drones, and innovative long-range net- work radios ensures that we are very familiar with new communication tech- nologies. This knowledge allows us to make the “best ? t” recommendations to customers based on their needs and us- age trends.

Looking at the Legislative arena, are there any issues on the horizon that could be good or bad for your business?

Please be specifi c. Some legislative changes are clearly driving higher bandwidth require- ments and higher availability require- ments. For example, MLC2006 will be incrementally implemented by compa- nies around the world, but generally it will provide for more access to commu- nications to the crew. The requirements for ECIDIS, paperless charts, electronic manifests, and ship tracking will simi- larly increase not only the bandwidth consumed by each ship but also the need for a highly available service rather than a “best effort” delivery that some vessels currently experience.

As a service provider we also closely track, and in? uence where appropriate, the regulatory changes affecting commu- nications in different jurisdictions around the world. There are ongoing con? icts and pending battles at the next World

Radio Conference regarding usage of C- band on vessels near shorelines. Some jurisdictions already limit or proh ibit such transmission, and without a coordi- nated argument from both satellite opera- tors and service providers, there is threat that access to this valuable service could be further limited. The usage and licens- ing approach for Ka-band service glob- ally is being broadly considered. Usage of unlicensed spectrum from shore links is another topic of frequent discussion with the various communication min- istries. As a communications provider,

Harris broadly tracks and represents our customers’ interests in these regulatory discussions.

Richard Simonian is the President of

Maritime Solutions, a business unit with- in Harris CapRock Communications. His group specializes in managed communi- cation systems and services for the global commercial maritime market including cruise and passenger vessels, shipping, service, and supply vessels and subsea communication systems and engineering.

ECDIS, paperless charts, electronic manifests and ship tracking will drive bandwidth quantity & quality

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