Page 28: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (November 2021)

INTERVIEW RONALD SPITHOUT, PRESIDENT, INMARSAT MARITIME

The Satcom ‘Highway’ will Enable Maritime

Digitalization & IoT

Solutions

By Greg Trauthwein

Global maritime communications powerhouse

Inmarsat earlier this year announced a pair of new tech offerings – ORCHESTRA and ELERA – that are touted as ‘the communications network of the future.’

We caught up with Ronald Spithout, President,

Inmarsat Maritime, for additional insights on how these services will power the future of maritime IoT.

work, whereby vessels are repeating each other signal,” simi-

Meet Orchestra lar to the way a home router handles WiFi.

“In my view, with an engineering background, (ORCHES-

The layered approach is designed to meet the accelerat-

TRA) is simply cool,” said Spithout. “We call it the commu- ing bandwidth requirements of more diverse, demanding and nication network of the future because it will rede? ne our mo- bility offering in the industry, not only in maritime, but in all ever more widely adopted applications in the commercial and government mobility markets, as Spithout explains Inmarsat verticals. It is doing that by leveraging all kinds of underlying is “targeting the markets that are absolutely dependent on mis- networks that we have at our disposal.” sion critical mobility.”

Inmarsat ORCHESTRA is designed to be a “global, multi-

ORCHESTRA is part evolution and revolution, as it com- dimensional, dynamic mesh network that will rede? ne con- nectivity at scale” as Inmarsat said when introducing it this bines the power of existing Inmarsat services and satellites, while adding the dynamic mesh technology and additional summer. ORCHESTRA is envisioned to be a seamless con- ? guration of Inmarsat’s ELERA (L-band) and Global Xpress low orbit satellites as needed.

(Ka-band) networks with terrestrial 5G, targeted low earth

ELERA orbit (LEO) capacity, a layered approach supplemented by a

In concert with ORCHESTRA, ELERA is designed to be ‘dynamic mesh network’, which allows individual terminals a catalyst for increased IoT solutions across all vertical mar- to act as nodes to route traf? c to and from other terminals. “Depending on where you are and what you need, the 5G kets that Inmarsat services, including maritime and offshore element automatically picks up the best performance needed energy.

“The drivers (for ELERA) are the accelerated demands on for your application,” said Spithout. Adhering to the adage

IOT and the ongoing growth of functionality where you need there is power in numbers, “this will be a dynamic mesh net- 28 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • November 2021

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