Pacific Basin Equips 99 Ships with KVH Mini-VSAT
Dry bulk shipping company Pacific Basin Shipping Limited has deployed KVH’s mini-VSAT Broadband solution on its entire fleet of 99 owned ships as part of its effort to modernize ship-shore communications.
“Satellite communications continue to become more cost-effective over time as requirements rapidly grow for bandwidth and speed,” said Capt. Uttam K. Jaiswal, general manager – marine at Pacific Basin, a Hong Kong based owner and operator of Handysize and Supramax dry bulk ships. “Aside from the obvious business requirements, we at Pacific Basin see value in enabling our seafarers to keep in contact with family and friends through the Internet. The new equipment will also enhance shore-to-ship crew training and support for safe ship operations.”
According to KVH Industries, Inc., the solution – initially chosen by Pacific Basin in the second quarter of 2016 – includes KVH’s mini-VSAT Broadbandsm service; TracPhone V7-IP Ku-band antenna system designed and built by KVH, combined with an Iridium OpenPort for backup; customized CommBox management solution; and IP-MobileCast content delivery service. All hardware is protected by the KVH OneCare extended warranty, and the solution also comes with the myKVH portal, which provides vessel location, connection details, management and control of the data usage onboard.
Pacific Basin chose KVH’s IP-MobileCast content delivery service to provide crewmembers with NEWSlink TV content – international news channels plus TV channels in crew members’ native languages. The package also includes daily NEWSlink newspapers with news and sports from the crews’ native countries, including the capability to read the newspapers from their own mobile devices.
The fully integrated solution, including antenna hardware, control units and all connecting cables, is shipped with a compact footprint, which is important for a global fleet striving for timely installations. “Our global service partners were able to easily accommodate the Pacific Basin vessels’ schedules and, as a result, managed to deploy the solution on all the vessels in a short period of time,” said Tommy Fung, KVH’s North East Asia sales manager.
