Calling from the Sea
Imagine this problem:
You’re on-board a ferry cruising across the North Sea between Newcastle and Amsterdam and you realize that you have to call home. Or someone back home has to call you. But you’re hundreds of kilometers from the nearest cellular operator’s service area. So what do you do? What can they do back home?
One alternative is to see if the ferry is equipped with a satellite telephone, but these services tend to be expensive and do not solve the problem of being accessible via your own cell phone number. Increasingly, therefore, a Base Transceiver Station (BTS) has become a permanent fixture on cruise ships and ferries. A BTS, connected to a cellular operator’s land-based Base Station Controller (BSC) over a satellite link, enables passengers to use their regular GSM telephones while at sea, but, given the expense of leasing satellite bandwidth, this alternative cannot serve a large number of simultaneous users either. So how can ship operators ensure that every passenger who wants or needs GSM service coverage will be able to afford it?
Maritime Communications Partner AS (MCP), a Norwegian-based provider of onboard cell phone connectivity to cruise ships and ferries that provides global coverage through leading suppliers of maritime satellite services, has come up with an ideal solution.
MCP is based in Grimstad, Norway– the port of the poets. "It’s the place to be/ when you must make a call/ at sea," as our own in-house poet (we got him cheap, from a temp service) tells us.
The key technology used by MCP are GSM A-bis optimization gateways designed by RAD Data Communications. The gateways reduce costs by saving on satellite bandwidth.
But you don’t have to be on a Danish-owned cruiseship on the North Sea (where MCP has deployed the product) to enjoy the benefits of the new technology. Skywave Communications Solutions resells the Globalstar Maritime Satellite Phone System for use on private boats.
