Blue Planet is an Athens based ship manager, operating a fleet of dry bulk carriers. The company has recently begun rolling out Starlink with Navarino and in this article Theodoros Papadopoulos, Chief IT Manager for Blue Planet, talks about the Starlink experience so far.
‘We were very happy to hear that our long-term partner Navarino had become a Starlink reseller, because we knew both that Navarino is a company we can rely on, and also that the Starlink service could potentially be a game changer for maritime satellite communications. While we are going to deploy the new service onto all our vessels, for the time being we have completed the installations on two. The feedback on Starlink from onboard so far has been very encouraging, with our seafarers especially excited by the speeds they can now enjoy, which on average is around 80 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload, but we have seen up to 150 Mbps download on occasion. Obviously this is a huge increase compared to traditional VSAT GEO systems and we are happy to offer each of our crewmembers 1 GB of free data per week, meaning that it is easier than ever for our seafarers to stay in close contact with their loved ones, which is one of our top priorities.
Starlink is also a major upgrade from the perspective of our business operations. Its combination of high speed and low latency allows us to remotely support our ships like never before, and applying new patches and updates to the onboard infrastructure is now much quicker. For example, we can now carry out security updates in less than a week, whereas before, using GEO systems, the same job could take almost a month.
Starlink is also much easier to be deployed and installed than other satellite communication platforms – we simply ship all the Starlink antennas to our Rotterdam warehouse and then send them to our fleet around the world to install, without the need for cranes or long delays, as the antenna can be up and running in a few hours.
Overall we are very happy with Starlink and we are proud to be working with an experienced partner like to Navarino, who helps us to roll out this new platform efficiently and also provides us with tools like Infinity to manage this new high speed service securely and with confidence.’
Kiriakos Striboulis, VP Market Intelligence for Navarino added ‘I am delighted to be working with Mr Papadopoulos on this exciting project to bring Starlink’s new LEO service to the Blue Planet fleet. For modern ship operators, connectivity is more important than ever, and the addition of Starlink to our portfolio will enable completely new ways of working for the maritime sector, as well as bringing a big upgrade to crew welfare and seafarer happiness. I look forward to continuing to work closely with Blue Planet to help them get the most from their new communications platform and from the Navarino technology solutions we can provide them with.’