Inmarsat's new FleetBroadband Large Money Bundles are generating a high level of interest among the yachting community.
Stratos Global today announced it is the first Inmarsat Distribution Partner to activate Inmarsat’s new FleetBroadband Large Money Bundle for single-vessel operators and fleets with fewer than 10 vessels.
The new Large Money Bundles offer the high performance (up to 432kbps), global coverage, simplicity and reliability of Inmarsat FleetBroadband — in addition to The Stratos Advantage value-added services — all at an affordable, fixed monthly rate. The packages include monthly data-connectivity plans as large as 5GB, in addition to highly competitive rates for voice calls.
The new plans meet the increasing data requirements of yachts and other vessels. The plans provide a high level of monthly bandwidth for email, web browsing, social networking, GSM and other popular applications. With these plans, FleetBroadband is available on terminals as small as 25cm.
The first FleetBroadband Large Money Bundle was activated by Stratos Channel Partner e3 Systems (e3) for one of the largest private sailing yachts built by Royal Huisman in Holland.
“These new plans are generating a high level of interest among the yachting community,” said e3 Managing Director Roger Horner. “They offer predictable costs, regional and global coverage, flexible usage and payment programs, as well as the added value of The Stratos Advantage services.”
Horner added, “We activated the plan onboard the yacht within days of its launch. The yacht’s captain now is examining Stratos Dashboard online monitoring tools and Stratos Trench firewall to ensure the highest possible broadband performance, security and cost control. These plans are a perfect solution for sailing yachts, yachts with itineraries outside traditional VSAT footprints and yachts with space and weight restrictions on which it is difficult to install a 1m VSAT antenna.”
Stratos President and CEO Jim Parm said, “With its depth of experience and creative approach to electronics integration, e3 is well positioned to bring the benefits of these new FleetBroadband Money Bundles to demanding vessel owners in many key geographic regions. We look forward to working with e3 and our hundreds of other capable Channel Partners to help vessel owners adopt the wide range of flexible pricing programs for which Inmarsat has become well known.”
FleetBroadband from Stratos provides cost-effective, high-speed data and voice communications – available simultaneously – at speeds up to 432kbps. FleetBroadband from Stratos also provides on-demand guaranteed IP data rates, regardless of the vessel’s location. The above-deck, stabilized, compact directional antennas are smaller and less expensive than VSAT solutions. Communications managers have discovered that FleetBroadband from Stratos can be rapidly deployed across an entire fleet and, as a standard IP service, seamlessly integrated with head-office networks. Terminals operate globally and the user interface is standard across all products.
Stratos’ more than 9,000 FleetBroadband activations encompasses all major geographic regions and vessel types, from customers including Wallem Shipmanagement, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, Varun Shipping Co., MISC Berhad, Albacora Group, MPC Steamship and the Royal Netherlands Navy.