The path to achieving a stable internet connection at sea is not an easy one, but Panasonic is one of the companies working diligently to make cruise ship networks behave seamlessly and swiftly.
TravelPulse had the opportunity to ask Ian Dawkins, Panasonic's Vice President, Global Network Operations all about the subject:
TravelPulse: What is the greatest challenge to achieving high-bandwidth connectivity at sea, and how has it changed over recent years?
Ian Dawkins: Travelers today want to visit more exotic locales than ever before. Simultaneously, they have grown accustomed to always-on, ubiquitous connectivity, and expect it onboard. Delivering internet service to thousands of mobile devices and providing overall connectivity for shipboard operations in the middle of the ocean-often times in some of the most remote parts of the planet-is not easily achieved.
With global cruise destinations moving into the Arctic, Antarctica, the southern Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Crossing and the Northwest Passage, service providers must be able to harness new technology to ensure seamless connectivity.
For Panasonic's maritime customers, this means leveraging the best-in-class entertainment and connectivity technology of Panasonic Avionics, to address the ever-increasing connectivity requirements of today's passenger maritime operators.
In 35 years, Panasonic Avionics has delivered over 9,000 in-flight entertainment systems and 1,700 in-flight connectivity solutions to the world's leading airlines, all backed by Panasonic's global mobility network. Today, that network covers more than 98 percent of the world's maritime corridors, with added capacity in high-traffic regions.
Panasonic employs new technology, including dynamic bandwidth allocation and high-throughput, smart satellite beam-switching technology to support advanced operational efficiency and scalability, to face key challenges for guest experience and operations.
Passengers commonly bring two or three devices each onto a cruise, and today's "connected family" can be expected to bring on several more. Panasonic's technology makes integration between the satellite and terrestrial networks transparent to the user.
Service reliability affects brand loyalty and creates new sources of revenue for today's operators. Cruise operators are equally concerned with maintaining a secure and robust operational network. Satellite connectivity at sea allows the cruise ship to stay fully connected to the company's IT infrastructure.
TP: How is Panasonic looking to the future beyond current satellite technology?
ID: Panasonic has a long heritage of focusing on the future of technology, and new satellite technology is no different.
Technical and engineering teams across Panasonic regularly look five, 10 and even 20 years ahead on behalf of our customers to forecast future requirements. Panasonic's plans include even higher throughput satellite capability. We are focused on layering in more capacity to serve constantly growing mobility users, including cruise lines.
To keep pace with rapidly improving on-orbit technology, we recognized a serious lag in available modem technology innovation that would help us keep pace with new high throughput systems.
To meet this requirement, Panasonic partnered with equipment manufacturer Newtec for a new modem to give connectivity customers access to dramatically increased speeds. The new modem will support speeds in excess of 400 Mbps so that passengers can easily and smoothly access rich media content while in flight or on the ocean.
We anticipate that industry players who continue to maintain the status quo with legacy modem technology will fall further behind, unable to deliver the bandwidth needs required by customers across mobility markets.
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