To make high performance affordable, flexibility is a must

Joanna Palmer, Editor of Superyacht Technology News was delighted to spend time with Adrien Pasqualon, (Business Development Manager) and Agata Widuto (Global Sales Manager) to find out more about Orbis Yacht, their specialist yachting division

When choosing a custom communications/data solution to support your unique needs, choose a company that completes detailed surveys to fully understand your requirements.  A company whose experienced engineers can design your system using the most robust technologies.  Whether you need onsite or offsite solutions in highly-developed areas or remote locations, carefully select a provider that offers a wide range of services includes feasibility studies, system integration, remote survey, project design, bandwidth brokerage, service activation, and management. Superior service is paramount at Milano Teleport, where you will also receive full maintenance backed by 24/7 customer support.

Milano Teleport is a globally recognized, telecommunications and Internet provider specializing in VSAT via Ku, C, Ka-Band satellites and 4G. They offer a suite of premium telecommunication solutions to keep you connected continuously from anywhere in the world.  They offer three brands which cover the shipping, cruising and yachting sectors – Milano Teleport, iSeaglobal, and Orbis Yacht.

Q: Please can you explain where Orbis Yacht has come from.

Orbis Yacht is 100% owned by Milano Teleport, Italy. It was created in 2014 after Milano Teleport identified the significance of the yachting market and decided to establish not just a business unit, but a whole new independent business entity.

 

Orbis’ main values are to maximise customer satisfaction and to minimise administration. We believe that the people on-board yachts should be allowed to enjoy themselves, even be allowed to indulge in a bit of luxury. So, Orbis offers unparalleled coverage, flexibility and technical support to make the yacht guests and owners’ lives onboard the best possible.

 

Orbis Yacht is a separate marketing and sales team, although the technical support and technical infrastructure are provided by Milano Teleport.

Q: What is a normal day for you at Orbis Yacht?

Every day is different, we have contact with different customers globally.  These include yacht management companies, chief engineers and meeting at the port with Captains and ETOs.  We are available to meet customers in any place, worldwide.  We are incredibly flexible, available for our customers 24/7 and very competitive price wise.

 

Q: Are there problems caused by the demands for communication onboard a yacht?

Guests and owners use multiple connected applications and several devices per person, plus they want to be connected all time and everywhere.  Secondly, they need high-performance connections able to handle all their high consuming applications including IPTV, video streaming, online gaming.  We believe no two yachts have the same needs. We research and provide the right communication solution for owners, guests, and crew for each unique vessel. Customer satisfaction is everything to us.

 

Q: So, what can you offer that is unique to other providers?

Orbis Yacht continuously works to offer the most updated VSAT technology available on the market and provides dedicated, high-level bandwidth specifically for superyachts. Our suite of premier communication services improves your connectivity – and thereby your experience – at sea.

Those with the yacht purse strings are usually willing to pay for the price of the quality they are expecting, but only when they are using it. They do not understand why they should pay a full year service that they use it for only a few months a year.

So, to make high performance affordable, flexibility is a must, which is what we offer.

 

Q: Explain how your flexible plans work

We can design our offers to fit the exact requirements of our clients, we offer a number of different plans.

 

We can provide a standard level plan for the crew to access and upgrade it to very high speed (even equivalent to optical fibre) just for few weeks when owners are on board, or to fit with charter bookings.  When the yacht has no guests, we can then reduce the package again.

 

Competitors packages are usually 12 months plus, but our basic standard contract is from 3 months (although we can do shorter lengths too).  This allows great flexibility to fit in with the yachting season.

 

Some of our clients are not cruising in winter and may benefit from a shore connection at their home port for a few months, so they don’t need Satellite or 4G connections. We can provide short term contracts just for the season or even just for a couple of months.

 

We offer the same incredible flexibility with our other services, like 4G.  We focus on flexibility, with month to month plans, therefore with no commitment we are offering the opportunity to change the package every month.

 

Another solution really appreciated by our clients is that we offer a data bundles from 100GB to 2TB or more, offering the advantage to renew or not when the bundle is all consumed or renew with a different volume of data.

 

Q: How can you achieve such flexibility?

As we are the operator, we manage our own networks across a fleet of satellites. This is not the case of some of our competitors who are dependent on the constraints imposed by the teleport they are buying the service from.

 

Also, we are independent of any big satellite or financial group who may expect some financial ratio. So, we can design our own strategy. As we want to grow in the yachting market, we set an aggressive pricing strategy to allow our yacht clients to benefit from higher speed and quality of service, at a better price.

 

Q: Explain Newtec, and what it means to yacht communication

We are the first and only to offer the Newtec experience to the yachting market. We offer now hybrid solutions, with a combination of i-direct and Newtec modems, to manage from 1 Mbps services to the astronomical speed of 100 Mbps.

 

Newtec comes from the broadcasting industry which is the most demanding in terms of speed and reliability. Newtec VSAT brings high-speed service and higher efficiency. Meaning that the price per Mega Bits per second is lower with Newtec than with iDirect, so for the same cost, Newtec provides about 30% higher bandwidth.

 

Orbis is now bringing Newtec to the marine industry and to the yachting market.

The standard product in the yachting industry is the iDirect X7, where a single modem configuration is optimized for speed up to 20-25 Mbps. With a similar single modem configuration and the same pricing (about 2000€), Newtec easily brings up to 50Mbps so double speed, while the higher spec model (about 6000€) brings up to 100mbps and more.

 

Bringing Newtec to the maritime industry required a relevant investment at Milano Teleport to build a full end to end Newtec network. Furthermore, we invested in R&D to develop our Hybrid solution which combines iDirect for standard speed and multiple satellite coverage and Newtec for very high-speed VSAT service. Both platforms are integrated in a single user-friendly interface, allowing an easy switch from iDirect to Newtec network.

 

VSAT service pricing is based on speed, 100 Mbps on Newtec remains more expensive than 20Mbps on iDirect. But with our flexibility, as you can be on standard VSAT rate with iDirect for the season and upgrade just when you need optical fibre speed, this premium service becomes affordable.

 

Q:  What does the future hold for Orbis?

We are always testing new hardware for higher performance, always following the developments of the satellite constellation, always applying new software and always planning ahead. So, if today we can offer 100 Mbps, in the not-so-far future we will offer 350 Mbps, or more, without breaking a sweat.

 

Our focus within the yachting market is to provide higher flexibility and higher speed, based on global connections.

 

We are already leading the field with our state of the art with Newtec and our Hybrid solution. Even if VSAT has been our primary target, we focus more and more on integrating other connectivity technologies such as 4G and smart solutions to manage the different connections, users, and devices.

 

For the future, we prepare ourselves to integrate 5G mobile networks in our solutions, and we are also looking with interest at LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite constellations, for which OneWeb just launched his first six satellites this week. This technology should bring higher speed and will reduce drastically the latency (delay between sender and receiver for a data packet), enabling the development of new real-time applications.

 

We are attending all the major yachting events in 2019 including YARE Networking in Viareggio, Palm Beach Intl Boat Show, Palma Superyacht Show, MYBA, Cannes Yachting Festival, Monaco Yacht Show, Fort Lauderdale Boat Show, Antigua Charter Show, and more.

For any query feel free to contact us