The World’s largest ship, Wonder of the Seas, set sail last month with 6,988 guests and 2,300 crew members on-board, and the Telecom26 team of IoT and maritime connectivity experts were agog at the sheer size of it all!
The ship is 1,188 feet/360m long with 18 decks and eight neighbourhoods, one of which contains over 20,000 plants, whilst a 10-deck-high zip line, a poolside movie screen and what is described as the longest slide at sea are also touted as major attractions.
At the time of writing, the Wonder of the Sea is in the port of St Thomas’ island in the Caribbean. You can track its progress on CruiseMapper.
In an earlier blog As cruise liners re-open their hatches, passengers expect high-quality, reliable and affordable connectivity at sea, our team of maritime connectivity experts discussed how the cruising industry had been hard hit by COVID. We were glad to read in the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) "2022 State of the Cruise Industry Outlook" report that full recovery is expected by 2023.
Naturally passengers on cruise ships will expect the same levels of connectivity at sea that they experience on-shore. Providing this is something that our team has been working on for quite some time with considerable success.
Using Private Networks to Provide Maritime Connectivity
At Telecom26 we’ve long been singing the praises of Mobile Private Networks at sea. Private networks are nothing new. They are essentially a closed network isolated from public view that is deployed in a specific location but still using 2, 3, 4 or 5G networks.
We firmly believe that vessels of all shapes and sizes should have their own mobile private networks (MPN) on-board in the same way businesses on land have private terrestrial networks over fibre, wireless or satellite on their business premises.
We build private networks that cover the footprint of a ship - no matter how huge - or other kind of vessel and provide:
- 4G (and future 5G) local radio coverage to ensure that connectivity is available
- the SIMs or eSIMs to enable devices to connect
- the ability to set-up Wi-Fi access, so you can create a local WAN.
Our SIMs or eSIMs enable devices to connect to the private network, but we also enable visiting (“roaming”) SIMs to connect, at the discretion of the private network operator, and through the control that we offer from our core. If you want to allow roaming, you can. If you don’t, it will be prohibited.
So, in our terms, the private network is self-contained, using dedicated radio access infrastructure, and powered by our mobile core, to which all permitted SIMs (and the devices that contain them) can connect. The interesting thing is that this can be literally anywhere – which brings us to….
Roaming Services for Passengers
For companies such as Royal Caribbean, owner of Wonder of the Seas, who are providing leisure or cruise services, private networks can be offered to passengers in two ways:
Firstly, passengers can be allowed to connect to the ship’s private network as they would roam on any other network. In this case, they will be responsible for their own bills and would pay the roaming fees direct to their operator.
Or, a ship can sell its own Telecom26 SIMs with pre-defined packages and bundles, so passengers can use the ship’s private network. This means that they will avoid the roaming charges of their home operators - and provides a new revenue stream for Cruise operators.
Find Out More
Telecom26 is a full-service global maritime cellular operator. We offer bespoke maritime and marine communications solutions that integrate inbound and outbound roaming, with full support of data services.
As a full member operator of the GSMA, we provide cross-border and international water services for ships, crews, passengers and devices.
To speak with one of our maritime connectivity experts about how we can help improve your connectivity - using private networks amongst other things - whilst in-port, hugging the coast or cruising out at sea, please contact us here.
You can read more about our Cellular At Sea service here.
Our Nearshore Connectivity Service is discussed here and more information about our Maritime IoT service can be found here.
Catching-Up
Telecom26’s IoT and maritime connectivity experts will be attending a couple of shows this year:
Nor-Shipping in Oslow, Norway from 4-7 April
Posidonia, the international shipping exhibition in Greece from 6-10 June
Please get in touch if you are going to either show and would like to meet up to discuss your global maritime connectivity requirements.
