Maritime and Other Mobility Services

Summary

This chapter assesses emerging maritime and terrestrial mobility applications and services that can be provided with satellite‐based systems. Maritime broadband satellite services have seen growth over the past 10 years with the market being served by lower bandwidth L‐band solutions (Inmarsat, Iridium) and regular C‐and Ku‐band Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) services. The maritime industry has made significant use of machine‐to‐machine (M2M) services on MSS bands. Military and government missions typically require to be able to sustain communications while on the move, known as Comms‐On‐The‐Move. These capabilities enable vehicles and other assets to achieve high‐throughput, reliable, and secure communications. Transportable systems have been available for years for military, news gathering, and sporting events. The “new angle” is to use an IP service over a Ka High Throughput Satellite (HTS) satellite to stream content via an Internet‐based VPN to the intranet of the content aggregator (e.g., a TV station).