Report: KVH leads maritime VSAT market

MIDDLETOWN – A new report has cited the mini-VSAT Broadband service of KVH Industries Inc. as the market share leader in the maritime VSAT industry by vessels in service.
KVH has nearly double the number of vessels in service compared with its nearest competitor, according to the fourth edition of the COMSYS Maritime VSAT Report.
COMSYS, based in the United Kingdom, is a research firm specializing in the satellite communications market.
Its report estimated that KVH’s mini-VSAT Broadband customers accounted for 17.9 percent of vessels using maritime VSAT service through the end of 2014. It said that KVH’s market share is nearly double the nearest competitor, whose customers account for an estimated 9.6 percent of vessels using VSAT service.
“KVH’s success in building the largest installed base of vessels over little more than six years from a standing start illustrates how powerful the combination of a smaller antenna, easier installation and better onboard integration can be,” Simon Bull, a VSAT industry analyst at COMSYS, said in a statement. “The past two years have seen the company introduce a range of attractive value-added services and invest heavily in content and integration in an impressive strategy to establish itself as much more than just a bandwidth reseller.”

KVH launched the mini-VSAT Broadband service in 2007. The company designed the service utilizing advanced spread spectrum technology that enables its TracPhone V-IP antenna systems to be 85 percent smaller than competing maritime VSAT products. As a result, it says that installation time and cost for maritime customers are reduced.

The mini-VSAT Broadband service also provides fully global coverage from 24 satellite transponders and is fast, KVH said.

“It is great to see one of the most highly regarded research reports in the satellite communications industry quantify KVH’s success in winning the maritime VSAT market leadership position,” Martin Kits van Heyningen, KVH’s CEO, said in a statement. “We’ve listened carefully to our customers and tried to continually improve our service to provide them with the connectivity and content services they need to add value for their customers, enhance their efficiency and keep their crews happy. Our strategy is clearly paying off, as 2014 was a record-breaking year for the company, during which our global mini-VSAT Broadband network delivered more than 500 terabytes of data and 25 million minutes of voice calls to our customers around the world.”

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KVH also developed the IP-MobileCast content delivery service, which utilizes multicasting technology to broadcast large files to all ships at once. With IP-MobileCast, customers pay a monthly subscription fee for entertainment and news content – new-release Hollywood movies and television shows, for example – but do not pay a data transmission fee.

KVH is also collaborating with maritime navigation and weather content providers such as Jeppesen, Transas and AWT to deliver electronic charts and high-resolution weather data via the IP-MobileCast content delivery service.
And, KVH plans to provide multicasting delivery of maritime training content from Videotel, a leader in maritime training and a company that KVH acquired in July 2014.

COMSYS said the maritime VSAT market has experienced strong growth, and estimated that nearly 21,000 vessels were equipped with maritime VSAT as of the end of 2014. It attributes this growth to changing attitudes within shipping companies about the return on investment of satellite connectivity, and to the realization that improved communications and Internet access for crews can save them money.

Said Bull, “It is all too easy to dismiss crew welfare as being something ‘nice to have’ and therefore a cost that can be easily dodged, but the fact is that recruitment and training cost money and increasingly these expenses are becoming significant. Many shipping companies experience annual staff turnovers in excess of 35 percent and, in one of our interviews with a major operator, a shipping company which had finally installed VSAT discovered that their retention rate had skyrocketed to 85 percent, easily justifying the additional cost of a VSAT service.”

He added, “Surpassing the 20,000 mark is considered to be a tipping point for the industry with the target now probably around 50,000 vessels over the next few years. Not only do we see vessel growth across the major segments, but bandwidth demand also continues to rise.”

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