Page 27: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (June 2014)

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Inmarsat broadband service subscribers and content will be securely downloaded and stored on the vessel’s Inmarsat iFu- sion box. The service is transferable with any upgrade from one Inmarsat service to the next – such as FleetBroadband to

XpressLink.

Market Drivers

While new rules such as the Maritime

Labor Convention 2016 (MLC 2006) are touted to help the mariner, Coles is skep- tical of its impact. “The Maritime Labor Convention (MLC) requires ship owners to supply some internet connectivity,” said Coles. “Because the convention is so loosely drafted though, just giving access to in- ternet, or just giving access to email, it does not quantify the cost or quantify the quality of the connection.

So you see everything from the (ship owners who are) leaders and innovators that are providing a (communications) pipe that is high quality, to the other end where it is a very poor connection, worse than dial up. But they have the check box.” “The new generation (of mariners) are internet natives, they take the commu- nications part of all of this for granted; they don’t think about how the internet gets into your house, they just expect it to be there,” said Coles. “The trick with the ship owner is to just expect the comms to be there. They do expect it to be there, they just don’t want to pay for the cost of a $400m satellite. But as we provide this new communications pipe, the crew bene? ts and the price will come down as well.”

Apart from crew connectivity, Coles sees the increasing ? ow of data, speci? - cally data to and from onboard machin- ery and systems, as the second big driver in the maritime communications market. “CISCO estimates that by 2020 there will be 50 billion ‘things’ connected to the internet, all providing information.

There’s already 12 billion,” Coles said.

While ‘the automated ship’ has long been theorized and debated, Coles said increasing the level of automation starts in the shipyard. “Hyundai and other yards are building ships with equipment that is all sensored” Coles said. “Hyun- dai themselves are selling ships on the basis that you buy the ship and you can buy a contract so once the ship has sailed it will continue to monitor, maintain and look after the ship.

Clarksons Research have estimated that by 2020 the convergence between

IT and shipbuilding will be worth $35 billion. The convergence between sen- sors and things that are connected to de- liver data and creating a smarter way of operating will be put on ships.”

In Coles estimation the remote moni- toring is the bigger piece, citing research from ESRG that estimates that just look- ing at today’s ? eet, there is $20B of value that can be created by remotely monitoring and putting sensors on ships. “That means pulling the cylinder be- fore it fails, arriving to port on time, it means that just getting all of this infor- mation and running your ship smartly from shore,” said Coles. “They (ESRG) think you can save up to $1m per ship per year if you input remote monitoring of a smart ship with sensors and analyt- ics, and using algorithms to come out with smarter business decisions. None of this is possible in shipping without a robust, industrial grade communications platform.”

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