SES to meet soaring cruise bandwidth demand with O3b mPOWER

Its next-generation O3b mPOWER satellites going up later this year with Boeing and SpaceX will be capable of delivering multi-gigabit connectivity. The first six of 11 satellites are scheduled for launch in the third quarter.

Service is expected to begin in early 2023.

'There's a lot of excitement about the launch of our new service and the upgrades coming with [mPOWER] over the next six to nine months,' said Greg Martin, VP product management, maritime at SES. 'We'll be finishing the winter season and starting the transition of ships to Europe and Alaska with a lot more capacity that's in high demand for the industry.'

Cruise mPOWERED Adaptive Traffic Management

Meanwhile, SES is already rolling out Cruise mPOWERED Adaptive Traffic Management — or 'smart networking' — to optimize the guest and crew experience. This prioritizes real-time traffic to ensure high quality for voice and video calls.

Martin explained why bandwidth demand is so high even though cruise ships are still sailing at reduced occupancy.

During the pandemic people used their phones and tablets more, a habit they're continuing as they return to travel — sharing photos and videos, from Facebook updates to TikTok. Plus, there are so many devices onboard now such as the tablets in every Virgin Voyages cabin and Princess Cruises' Medallions that facilitate services like ordering drinks, booking shore excursions, checking accounts and more.

As well, cruise lines have vastly increased remote functions, including crew training and monitoring fuel consumption and wastewater management.

Cloud dependency

'There's a huge dependency on the cloud,' Martin said, a point driven home during meetings at Seatrade Cruise Global, and lines want to ensure cloud processing is as fast and reliable as possible. 'They're looking for us to make sure that environment, which is heavily dependent on the Internet, on cloud service, is working all the time.

'We have a lot of demand, so much that we're sold out in some areas of our MEO capacity,' he continued. That's O3b's medium Earth orbit satellite constellation, which provides very high throughput, low latency capacity. MEO service is available around the world at plus or minus 50 degrees.

It's 'very tight' in Europe now with the number of ships there, Martin said. However, if MEO is sold out in some areas, SES still provides what he called 'excellent service with our traditional geostationary products, which is what the rest of the industry has.'

More MEO capacity is on the way with mPOWER.

Crew needs

According to a recent Faststream Recruitment survey of 1,011 shipboard and shoreside cruise professionals, Wi-Fi ranked in the top three areas that seafarers said lines could improve on.

Martin sees crew Wi-Fi issues as a short-term issue that comes down to the restart and getting things 'back into balance. A lot of ships don't have enough capacity and they're prioritizing guest traffic and the system traffic,' he said. 'Over the next months, that's going to settle down.'

Martin added that every line he talks with puts crew Wi-Fi near the top as a priority.

Customers and growth

SES customers include Royal Caribbean Group, Princess, MSC Cruises, Virgin Voyages and several others.

According to Martin, SES has 'a lot of good [customer] prospects that aren't announced yet, especially on the larger ships and new ships that are coming. Our service is going to grow over the next year to more cruise lines that see the value of the higher throughput, lower latency service with mPOWER.'

The future looks bright.

'We're super excited about our position in the market and how we're going to help the industry go to the next level as far as connectivity,' Martin said. 'We think we have the right capabilities to do that ... Our service is going to grow to some new cruise lines over the next year and continue to expand further.'

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