You’ve never had it so good – as long as you aren’t at sea

To judge by many of the presentations at the Global VSAT Forum event in London last week, the shipping industry has never had it so good – in terms of communications at least. Prices are falling, choice is broadening and access to social media is growing, overturning decades in which patchy and expensive communications were the norm.

Not so fast, says Mark Woodhead, managing director of Headland Media. We may be living in a golden age of communications on land but it’s not the same at sea. As a demonstration, he got the audience to acknowledge who had made a call, checked, email, surfed the web or used social media in the course of the first conference session.

By contrast, most seafarers he said are ‘living in the late 1990s’ in terms of communications infrastructure and the fact that we take our connectivity for granted should not stop us forgetting that few seafarers enjoy anything like this level of connectedness. Given the importance that the IMO for one places on the ‘human element’ in shipping, this is something we should be concerned about.

“The first thing I did when planning this speech was to turn off all my gadgets and work out what I was going to say. That is the life that many seafarers have today,” he said. Headland has a daily relationship with 9,000 vessels and 200,000 seafarers, distributing news and entertainment as well as training and safety films.

Woodhead turned his connections back on to email questions on the opportunities that technology and connectivity presented to Headland Media’s clients and got 100 replies,  some running to multiple pages. As this was not a formal process, he backed it up with the ITF’s 2010 seafarer survey, but the results were closely aligned.

“From what I got, I conclude that between 10 and 50% of seafarers have access to email onboard ship. Hardly any have private email accounts, they are usually fixed to the ship and accessed by master. Hardly any have access to attachments,” he said.

Where email is provided, messages are often restricted to 3,000 characters. Some are charged for sending and receiving emails and these are almost always batched, meaning they go off the ship in a pre-determined time window rather than real-time.

“If that was how we were getting our email on land, we’d have a different attitude and we’d use it in a very different way,” he observed wryly. If he was surprised by that response, there was worse to come. “For internet access, by which I mean the ability to surf the web, the ITF found that almost 20% had access. From the information we got, it is less than 10%. Some have access in port but most are going to seamen’s mission or internet cafés.”

One anecdote he harvested was of a seafarer who got off a vessel and sat on the pavement for three hours to get into an internet café. The harbour side bars opposite were mostly empty while people queued up for web access.

“All this makes you realise this isn’t just something seafarers want, it’s beginning to be fundamental. Even though merchant shipping is going through hard times, retention and recruitment are still very difficult. Most of the people in that 10% with web access told me they would never sign contract for a ship which didn’t have internet access. Three or four were happy to sign a nine month contract on ships with internet access rather than six months on ships that didn’t,” he added.

The killer app here is Skype, the modern-day phone call and text machine in one – most seafarers never used its video calling functionality. Seafarers also want to be able to use email afloat as they do ashore – in private with attachments. They also want to be entertained, with social media, instant messaging, video, film and news from home.

But as Woodhead pointed out, his respondents were equally as interested in what they could use this connectivity for professionally as personally.

“They want chart updates, information on piracy, safety and security information, updates on regulations, trends in shipping. More and more of them realise that regulations are increasingly important and serious for them. They also want to use connections to research answers to problems onboard. They would rather search forums or the web than phone the office,” he added.

There are a handful of intriguing statements to unpack there, but the main takeaway is that better connectivity might help to save time (and therefore money) and improve performance and safety and boost quality of life. That’s a good deal for a few megabytes of data per month.

What is stopping greater connectivity can basically be defined as cost and control. Neither should stand in the way of better availability of services to crew, Woodhead reckoned. The competitive nature of market is driving down costs and control, either through bandwidth management to separate business from leisure traffic, or means to control virus and unauthorised access risk, is commonly available.

“Modern routers and software can easily sort the bandwidth problem out. It’s also easy to establish a walled garden that pushes users to approved sites. We act as ISP for 600 vessels providing spam filtering and anti-virus and we have not had a problem. Probably a bigger issue for the content owners at least, is copyright.”

As Woodhead sees it, if there is a responsibility to control the technology, there is a greater responsibility to provide the access. To a shipping company it can make a difference to whether or not they attract and retain the seafarers they need. Access to communications also forms part of the guidelines to the Maritime Labour Convention. Responsible managers will want to be seen as compliant and in any case the direction of travel is set.

“We are at a tipping point, the first time where cost, regulations infrastructure and seafarer demand are all pulling the same direction. It’s time we trust the crew to use these services responsibly. Welfare is a key element but better connectivity offers significant entertainment and professional opportunities too.”