Marlink: Inmarsat Global Xpress part of the mix – but not at any price
As DigitalShip’s Rob O’Dwyer pointed out at the Marlink-Astrium SMM press conference, without Marlink, Inmarsat is going to struggle to sell its Global Xpress VSAT offering.
But as O’Dwyer also noted, Marlink needs Inmarsat too, despite its market penetration – it claims that one in every two ships sailing uses data provided via Vizada or Marlink, the former now rebranded as Astrium.
It’s also because Marlink has the power to effectively take business away from Global Xpress if the two fail to strike an agreement, given its portfolio approach of competing VSAT and L-band offers.
As Marlink ceo Tore Morten Olsen pointed out, as the market gets more complicated, its offer is about simplifying choice for users. If that means Inmarsat, Intelsat, Iridium or another, they can tailor the pipe and the applications that act as added value.
And in addition to new capacity booked on Intelsat’s Ku-band mobility infrastructure and an entry-level VSAT service, Marlink has some nice add-ons. These range from the relatively common VSAT/L-band auto-switching to nifty iPhone and iPad user management control interfaces and integration of Microsoft Outlook into its SkyFile email package, with 500 merchant vessels slated for upgrade.
Its WaveCall VSAT services are also being sold on a MSS-like basis, with access and bandwidth bundles priced to allow users to dip their toes in the water and ‘open up to all you can eat’ any time they are ready.
Astrium said it had already sold more than 200 such bundles – double its projected target. As Morten Olsen quipped, “the industry has realised it is raining and it will continue to rain for a while. Owners need to keep going until the rain goes away. Business decisions are being made on operational efficiency gains”. For once this wasn’t about rain fade.
All good stuff but what about the bigger picture? Morten Olsen pointedly said the company would ‘maintain our loyalty to both customers and partners’ a swipe at Inmarsat’s new policy of ‘you’re either with us or against us’.
Even so, he revealed that Astrium was negotiating with Inmarsat to become a GX distribution partner, in line with its ‘multi-technology’ approach. To some extent he said this was less about Ka or Ku band, but rather about being able to offer the best and broadest range of services.
Negotiations are ongoing and Marlink’s aim he said was to ‘be able to build a sustainable business model for GX and a future for Astrium and our partners. A major part of this business is with our distribution channel so we are not just negotiating for Astrium in this agreement”.
And he added that the negotiations were unlikely to succeed solely on the basis of price. It was ‘critical’ he said that any agreement was based on services. If Inmarsat continued to insist that maritime was a one market, one service sector, then it failed to understand the ecosystem that supports it. Marlink’s pitch would be for value-adds and that the technology connection to the ‘solution layer’ should be independent of the connectivity provided. The era of open source satcoms is upon us.
And in case that seemed too neutral, there was a final swipe at the announcement the day previously of Inmarsat’s unlimited FleetBroadband package – an offer he said was most likely dreamt up to counter its WaveCall offer.
“We have lot of experience with the one customer [Maersk] which has unlimited FleetBroadband so we have a good idea of how many vessels of that type can connect to the network before it cracks up. That’s the next question to ask Inmarsat.”