Imtech Demos Remote Access to Cobham’s Communication Systems

Imtech Marine and Cobham SATCOM announce at Nor-Shipping 2013 the introduction of a sophisticated remote access service. Delivered by the Imtech Marine 24/7 Global Control Rooms (GTAC, Global Technical Assistance Centres) in Rotterdam, Houston and Singapore, the new service allows direct access to a vessel’s Cobham SATCOM communications systems, including current generation SAILOR GMDSS products and satellite antennas. As a result, both companies’ work in this remote access innovation seamlessly connects with the goal of reducing equipment life-cycle costs and maximizing uptime.

“Experience shows that remote equipment monitoring and direct access provides significant operational and financial benefits for ship owners,” comments Dennis Mol, Director Technology and Competence Development, Imtech Marine. “Through our partnership and subsequent technology integration with Cobham SATCOM we can now conduct regular health checks on SAILOR systems from shore, enabling us to conduct preventative maintenance and reduce the time and cost of visiting a vessel for manual servicing. We can also prepare SAILOR products for annual servicing from shore, reducing the time needed on board by up to 75%.”

The Imtech Marine GTAC is now able to view in real-time the status of SAILOR systems that are running the Thrane Management Application (TMA); which today includes SAILOR 6000 GMDSS Series products, such as the SAILOR 6222 VHF DSC Class A, SAILOR 6300 MF/HF and SAILOR 6110 Mini-C GMDSS. The TMA is a software service made possible by Cobham SATCOM’s ThraneLINK network protocol. It is already widely in use as the single-point-of-entry for SAILOR products. GTAC can also carry out health checks on Cobham SATCOM’s SAILOR 900 VSAT and the SAILOR FleetBroadband family.

The integration of SAILOR products and the TMA with GTAC is a joint project between Cobham SATCOM and Imtech Marine, whose iShare@Sea philosophy generates optimal network topology to support ship-shore data management through GTAC. This philosophy, initiated by Imtech Marine and supported by the Dutch maritime industry, gives guidance on how to collect data from different devices and components with the minimal use of hardware and cabling, taking airtime costs, coverage and compliance rules into consideration.