Lights out for the territory

During last week’s Nor-Shipping when the talk was mostly of offshore support vessels and optimisation, a small but significant nugget slipped into the public domain. Amid all the kite-flying about Arctic shipping, sub-sea risk management and the Northern Sea Route, it emerged that this week’s Maritime Safety Committee at the IMO will include a submission by the United States on behalf of Iridium.

In the typically windy prose of the IMO, the submission notifies the committee that it intends to ask the newly-merged NCSR sub-committee (formerly NAV and COMSAR) to verify that the Iridium satellite constellation meets the criteria necessary to be used for the Global Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) and that the sub-committee recommends that the MSC recognises the system for such use.

What the committee makes of this remains to be seen. But presumably the distinguished delegates’ attention will first be drawn to the assertion that the Iridium constellation provides ‘at least 99% availability’.

Making this submission may require something of a procedural waiver since there is disagreement across the industry as to whether the Iridium network does indeed achieve this magic number.

This is not the first time that Iridium has tilted at the right to run GMDSS in addition to incumbent Inmarsat. When I shared the news with a maritime journalist at Nor-Shipping, their reaction was ‘oh no, not again’.

Why now appears to be the key question and the answer appears to be topical: concerns by the US Coast Guard that coverage of the polar regions is too patchy to give it the level of security it seeks as the ice retreats and the Northern Sea Route opens up to summer shipping.

Anyone attending the Nor-Shipping event in Oslo last week would identify with that, but it is important to remember that such conditions are not expected before 2050, depending on the rate of growth of CO2 emissions.

Last year there were less than 40 transits of the NSR – though that level has grown fast – and pundits who fancy themselves Arctic experts like to talk of days to be shaved off the Asia-Europe run by transiting the pole. Sober heads are less sure, pointing to the Russian attitudes to ‘cost recovery’ the lack of port infrastructure, pilotage, icebreaking tonnage and digital charts as potential icebergs.

Not to mention the fact that cutting service times for containerised cargoes would pretty much denude the existing supply chain and cause more stress to earnings. In wet and dry bulk it would rip up the tonne-mile rulebook too but that’s another story.

So the question again – why now? Perhaps the answer is more about building visibility and credibility in the next few years as Iridium seeks to raise the money needed to build and launch IridiumNext. And IridiumNext would probably be a stronger platform on which to build a GMDSS-capable network.

It’s no insult to call the current constellation the Ford F150 of maritime satellite – in fact it’s a compliment. It’s cheap, plentiful, easy to work with and users like it, though reliability is not all it should be by some accounts. Is that the criteria for a global maritime safety service? Practical concerns aired around the industry include whether the coverage is uniform enough to support GMDSS.

Its own figures show Iridium achieving no better than 96.2% in 2012 and presumably thinks that the criteria it must meet to operate GMDSS is being waived on Iridium’s behalf. It’s in the way of things that Iridium will doubtless contest those numbers and probably accuse Inmarsat of manipulating its own.

One way or the other, the committee must either be assured or change the starting criteria. Detail is what the Maritime Safety Committee is there for and there surely can be no surprise if it asks Iridium to either work on its performance or come back when Next is available.

What will be interesting to see is whether Inmarsat reacts accordingly and puts in place a plan for improved polar coverage in future. This last remaining gap is also being eyed by Telenor and KVH. The former has coverage planned in support of Norwegian offshore ambitions and the latter recently struck a deal with Iridium to use it as back up for ships sailing out of VSAT coverage, not for the first time either.

The irony of this situation is not that Inmarsat is concerned by a competitor muscling in on its (IMO-mandated) territory. It is that the same competitors who accuse Inmarsat of sharp practice, clearly sense an opportunity to get one over on the old lady by resorting to a little ‘diplomacy’ of their own.