The service collates short-wavelength, high-data transfer satcoms bands like the new Ka-Band with industry-standard Ku-band and L-band services, integrating offerings from Inmarsat, Iridium, Intelsat, Eutelsat Communications, Telenor, Thuraya and SES, and switching seamlessly between them in order to provide a consistently clear signal.
Airbus argues that rather than forcing a shipowner to choose a certain band to operate in, risking failures on the higher-end, shorter-wavelength services because of rain fade, and sluggish data transfer speeds on the more-reliable but much lower-bandwidth service, L-Band, AuroraGlobal provides completely reliable, always-on connection. “Those that sell only this [band] or only that one, will always promote their services as the only thing – because that’s the only thing they have to sell,” says Tore Morten Olsen, head of maritime services business communications at Airbus Defence & Space.
“We want to move beyond that because we think this is not something the shipping market and the shipowners should have to worry about. They should worry about quality of service, data throughput, and the applications they use.
“We’re not always going to be the cheapest, but we will be the most reliable.”
Crucially, Airbus maintains that the AuroraGlobal network is not intended to compete with rival Inmarsat’s Global Xpress (GX) service, which is slated to become fully online at the end of 2014, after successfully launching its first satellite (pictured) in December of 2013.
“We are not creating a package to compete with Global Xpress,” said Airbus Defence & Space chief marketing officer Ghani Behloul. “The intention is to provide an offering which can be upgraded when GX is ready. Inmarsat Ku coverage is very limited, and one of the things we are hearing from clients is that the Ku service is getting poor.
“We have much more Ku capacity and coverage.”
After the launch of Inmarsat’s Global Xpress service (and which successfully launched its first of three satellites in December) as well as Intelsat’s EpicNG, “In theory when we get onto the high-throughput satellites we could provide 500mb/s transfer speed,” Olsen says. “Inmarsat’s says its GX system has 50mb/s download and 5mb/s upload speed.”
Although providing internet access services for crew welfare forms around 90% of demand, shipowners are increasingly in need of the applications that AuroraGlobal can provide for ship performance measurement, says Olsen, citing the recent example of UASC, whose newbuilds are each arriving with at least 7,000 vessel performance management sensors.
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