For years GMN served cruisers and small vessels with top-notch satellite equipment and data services. We still do. After a few years, however, we started providing those same solutions on a big scale.
Cruise ship big.
Through our RedPort Global brand, we provide network management solutions for vessels and fleets of vessels. These include crew email solutions, passenger internet, WiFi cafes, VOIP, routers, data optimization and more.
In May, our VP of Sales and Marketing - John Dark - was in Europe touring one of our RedPort manufacturing facilities and two of our customers: arctic cruise ships Plancius and Ortelius. The Plancius and the Ortelius travel the poles depending on the season, taking visitors to some of the most remote regions on the planet.
John visited them at dock in Hansweert, Netherlands. He was able to see RedPort wxa routers in action, use our VOIP services, and try out a cruise ship WiFi cafe.
Here’s a few pictures he took on his trip.
1. The prow of the Ortelius, an arctic cruise ship. Docked in Hasweert, Netherlands.
2. The bridge of the Ortelius.
3. RedPort Global in action. This is one of RedPort's webXaccelerator routers providing complex network management routing for the ship.
4. John checks out the WiFi signal on his iPhone. Looks pretty good!
5. John makes his way to the Plancius to see how the WiFi cafe is doing.
The Plancius and the Ortelius both provide guests with pin-codes for network access while they are out cruising the poles. This is a fairly standard industry procedure that makes it easy for guests to quickly connect to the internet while avoiding complex connection procedures for the vessel.
6. The WiFi cafe in action. Both cruise ships provide specific cozy areas for guests to come and check their email or browse the internet.
7. Both cruise ships have multiple satellite terminals. Their main satcom solution is a Inmarsat FleetBroadband Sailor 500 broadband unit. This terminal is able to achieve network speeds of 500 kbps (for reference, a standard Iridium handheld satellite phone has network speeds of 2.4 kbps - this FleetBroadband is more than 200 times faster).
8. Both ships also have a backup satellite broadband unit - an Iridium Pilot, just in case their main terminal goes down. Our RedPort networks have automatic failover built in - this means that if the FleetBroadband goes down or experiences data overload, the network automatically pushes some of the load onto the Iridium Pilot. Connection is therefore seamless, automatic, and practically failproof.
9. John meets with some of our fellow satellite industry pioneers in Moscow. After a long trip he says goodbye to the Netherlands, goodbye to Moscow, and heads back to the USA.