Inmarsat rolls out Fleet Xpress service

Speaking to Seatrade Maritime News at Sea Japan 2016 in Tokyo, Drew Brandy, senior vice president, maritime market strategy for Inmarsat pointed out what the company sees as some of the unique features of Fleet Xpress which was launched at the end of March.

These were that its Ka-Band was backed up by L-Band Fleetbroadband service, which provides a back-up against rain fade to give continuous connectivity, Inmarsat Gateway which is platform that supports the develop, testing and hosting of applications, and the ability to partition billing for example if the service is used by a company providing a maintenance contract.

Just two weeks in Brandy said the reaction to the new service had been good and it had a backlog of orders in Asia, including Japan.

In addition Fleet Xpress already has 2,500 customers lined up through Xpress Link customers who will see the new service installed over the next three years.

The speed of roll out of Fleet Xpress will be based on its owner capacity, that of its partners, and simply the availability of vessels for installation.

“To be ambitious we’d like to be able to install 200 per month, but there’s a lot of challenges around that, not only from a resources perspective but also where our customers vessels are operating around the world,” Brandy said.