Baltic Sea cruise ferry operator, Viking Line, has entered into a new five-year contract with Marlink continuing its existing agreement for the supply and operation of its satellite communications and the enhancement of its Sealink(TM) systems onboard the company's fleet of ferries.
From its head office in Åland, an island in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland, Viking Line operates seven overnight cruise-ferries on routes between Finland, Sweden and Estonia. Marlink has worked with the company since 1995 at which time the ferry operator became the first Sealink(TM) customer outside Norway.
Sealink(TM) is Marlink's premium maritime VSAT satellite communications system which operates on C-band or Ku-band. The Viking Line system will be enhanced in early 2010 to bring the onboard systems for all ships to the same standard, while the overall bandwidth will be substantially increased. In order to provide high speed data, Marlink will take advantage of the latest coding technology recently made available via state of the art satellite modems. All ships will have access to passenger Internet FreeLan, the Marlink Internet@Sea onboard public Internet WiFi service with Prepaid Surf access control and Prepaid Talk telephone service for crew and passengers. Company telephone and data communications are provided through premium and guaranteed bandwidth direct lines between the company head quarters and the ships. The company LAN data exchange between the Viking Line head office and the ships at sea will also be upgraded by using high performance link optimizing services, which compresses data to improve speed and minimize bandwidth usage.
(www.marlink.com)