Simon Møkster Shipping  Integrates Marlinks Provided Tampnet North Sea LTE

15 March 2016

Simon Møkster Shipping has become the first to integrate Marlink provided Tampnet North Sea LTE (Long-Term Evolution) services across its entire fleet of vessels. Tampnet’s state-of-the-art, low latency, high-bandwidth North Sea LTE services are enabled by an extensive 2500km subsea fibre network. Tampnet’s LTE network works seamlessly as part of Simon Møkster’s hybrid communication service from Marlink, which also integrates high bandwidth VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal), L-band and terrestrial 3G/4G to create a complete and cost-effective multi-band communication system of any fleet in the world.

Simon Møkster is widely recognised for its innovative on board communication technology strategy, which ensures high bandwidth broadband availability for its clients, wherever they are operating. The integration of the Tampnet North Sea LTE service will support Simon Møkster’s clients in the North Sea, enabling them to utilise the new connectivity for real-time applications that are optimised with lower latency links, i.e. video-conferencing or instant messaging. In addition to low-latency, Tampnet’s technology’s is well-proven to function in adverse weather conditions.

Though Tampnet services have been available in the North Sea since late 2013, the current user-base consists primarily of FPSOs, drilling rigs and vessels with specific requirements. Simon Møkster is the first vessel company to leverage the innovative offshore mobile service on a fleet-wide basis, which is made possible as a result of the partnership established between Tampnet and Marlink in May 2015. With access to Tampnet North Sea LTE, Marlink can fully realise its multi-band service approach, offering an extra layer of flexibility and cost-effectiveness for users of its innovative solutions including SMARTConnect in the North Sea.

“It is our philosophy to ensure we provide the most flexible and available broadband communication for our clients and our own operational use across the fleet,” said Terje Gjerde, ICT Manager at Simon Møkster. “Tampnet gives us significant new capabilities that can be accessed easily, ensuring our ability to support our offshore Oil & Gas customers to communicate globally, and especially in the North Sea. This will be a huge benefit to our clients in the region and we are looking forward to the potential to integrate further LTE services with Marlink in support of customers operating in other Oil & Gas producing regions.”

Marlink’s multi-band/hybrid services seamlessly combine multiple communication carriers to provide the best available link based on pre-defined parameters set and managed by the customer. With a service delivery independent of specific carriers, cost can be reduced and greater flexibility and control provided for the customer. Tampnet North Sea LTE connectivity augments the existing services provided by Marlink. The multi-band approach provides least-cost/best performance routing to ensure highly reliable and high bandwidth communication across Simon Møkster’s 25 strong fleet of offshore support vessels.

For Simon Møkster, Tampnet connectivity is configured much the same as the Marlink VSAT services on board, where ‘Closed User Groups’, otherwise known as ‘Pooled Services’ ensure that the Tampnet service instantly recognises a Simon Møkster vessel, and shares bandwidth accordingly from a dedicated pool. With dedicated capacity for its fleet, Simon Møkster vessels can be sure that VSAT and North Sea LTE services will always be available as bandwidth is not shared with 3rd parties. This supports Simon Møkster’s ability to fully utilise business collaboration tools like Microsoft Skype for Business (Lync), as well as ensuring clients on board receive the throughput they request.

Marlink’s cutting-edge solution also ensures flexible bandwidth provision for even the most diverse and demanding applications requested by Simon Møkster’s clients. Marlink can currently temporarily increase available VSAT bandwidth on specific request, such as during the Stril Server vessel’s period as a chartered Wind Farm Support Vessel off the UK’s East coast. Now though, extra bandwidth through Tampnet North Sea LTE will be available on demand for North Sea operations, negating the need for Simon Møkster to order VSAT bandwidth increases for clients with specific demands.