Frank Coles interview Part 3 – Inmarsat will compete to survive

So far Inmarsat Maritime president Frank Coles has put up a robust defence of the company’s strategy and an informed one too. His time served at SP GlobeWireless, where he sold Inmarsat and its alternatives, gave him enough of an insight into how the company worked to make his move there to run the maritime business a natural one.

I was keen to know whether Inmarsat would completely take the gloves off against its competition. After all, they have used every trick in the book against him and in the sound and thunder stakes they are certainly getting the column inches. Volume is not always a good indicator of quality, however, so just what is the strategy?

“Perception is reality to some extent and I’ve been very specific; we are not going to go direct to customers, but we are going to go after Iridium and KVH and competing VSAT offers,” he says.

The upshot is that if its channel partners are selling those products too, it might receive less favourable treatment from Inmarsat – though the airtime rates it receives are common to all DPs.

“Inmarsat has to grow its business and though some people want Inmarsat to sink quietly, we are a public company with customers, employees, a board and shareholders and we have a responsibility to each of those,” he adds.

Though the channel partners ‘are free to sell whatever they want,’ in reality that means that the Coles business plan is to churn KVH and Iridium. He has tasked the Inmarsat sales force to go after that business; channel partners will receive a competitive hardware and airtime offer to bring new customers to Inmarsat, but he reserves the right to target the same customers using other channel partners too if they don’t play ball.

“That is competition. Iridium is doing the same thing in giving away their hardware free any chance they get. KVH’s entire marketing plan is anti-Inmarsat not pro-KVH. Are we supposed to continue to be stately old chap who stands there and gets kicked? If you want to compete with the big boys then you have fight like them.”

His trump card is that Inmarsat unlike its main competitors, is financially stable and its networks fully-funded, giving it a reliable sustainable service but he is clearly frustrated that some partisan reporting and PR spin dressed up as industry opinion has made those competitors look like a serious alternative.

Coles is aware of the risks of being over-aggressive against its detractors but he says that even the Inmarsat channel partners are growing tired of reading claims by rivals of services that can never be realised.

“We’re seeing that more and more. The people that understand the market understand what we are doing and that we can be relied upon to deliver. Our track record speaks to that and our future commitment is just the same.”