Page 54: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (August 2014)

54 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News ? AUGUST 2014 Fleet-wide roll-out of iW servic- es from Inmarsat Maritime rep-resents the latest outward dem-onstration by E.R. Schiffahrt of ship-to-shore connectivity. ERS Nauti- cal Director Christoph Werner describes an owner communications strategy bal-ancing the technically possible with the Þ nancially reasonable. With a ß eet of more than 100 ships under its control, daily communications ship-to-shore have an impact on near- ly all departments for E.R. Schiffahrt (ERS). Given that the German company is a large scale charter owner and ship manager, ERS requires communications tools distinguished by ß exibility. In fact, according to ERS Nautical Di-rector Christoph Werner, ever since the advent of satellite communications, the group has been ?trying to keep the right balance between what is technically pos-sible and what is really reasonable. So we always have to consider both our own demands to communicate with our ships and the demands of our customers regarding connectivity.? Over the last decade, Werner and the industry as a whole has stood witness to a dramatic and thorough transformation in connectivity from ship to shore. Start-ing from a mix of plain text/fax messag-ing and ?seldom and expensive phone calls,? services have developed to take in full exchange of e-mails with or without attachments and frequent phone conver- sations, and pushed on to recent demand for internet connectivity. ?In equal parts the driver is crew wel-fare and ship´s business,? said Werner. ?Both sides beneÞ t enormously. Our crew will be able to use the internet not only in port or along the coast but also at open sea. From the business point of view, there is an increasing demand for a permanent and stable connectivity be-tween the shore side (owner / operator / manager and charterer) and the vessel in order to exchange an increasing number of all kinds of data.?ERS is in the process of changing its entire ß eet from dial up connections using Inmarsat Maritime?s SAT-B and Fleet 77, to Fleet BroadBand also from Inmarsat. The upgrade - to Inmarsat?s i250 offer - builds on 2011 commitment by ERS to iFUSION as its enabling plat-form covering communications for 87 ships. Under the new arrangement ERS will be able to take advantage of iW, a pre-paid web-browser service available to crew members.The upgrade also includes a switch to iFUSION 2GB price plans. According to Werner, the move has been initiated to improve overall connectivity, enhance crew welfare and optimize communica-tion costs.?We undertook several surveys to es- tablish how best to achieve a solution that is both technically well-advanced and cost efÞ cient,? says Werner. ?Ulti- mately, we decided to upgrade the i250 by adding the iW solution to cope with the increasing demand for connectivity between ship and shore in all respects. The requirement was that the solution had to be cost effective but demonstrate that it could extend data collection, in-crease general communications and im-GERMANYER SchiffahrtER Schiffahrt Making the Connection MR #8 (50-57).indd 54MR #8 (50-57).indd 548/4/2014 10:18:56 AM8/4/2014 10:18:56 AM