Category: Communications

Tomorrow the Volvo Ocean Race begins its first offshore leg — Alicante, Spain to Capetown, South Africa — and Thrane & Thrane is justifiably proud of how it will help the racers keep in touch and also help us follow the action. That’s the company’s little Inmarsat mini-C dome in the foreground along with its FleetBroadband 150 (also sold as the KVH and Intellian FB150s, I think). The Volvo boats also get Sailor VHF radios– probably the 6215 model which has impressed me in testing you’ll hear about soon — and big FB500 systems especially useful for uploading video. That’s one job of “media crew members” (MCMs) like Groupama’s Yann Riou shown filming above. To see what this equipment and the crews are about to endure check out these video snippets from the last Volvo. And note that B&G is also proud of its serious Volvo involvement, but I have more Thrane & Thrane news…

It seems that on July 1 Inmarsat rather harshly changed the game for boaters who have a Fleet Broadband system but only use its data and/or voice services occasionally. I emphasize “seems” because the intricacies of satellite airtime rates are daunting. That’s largely because Inmarsat wholesales airtime to distribution partners like Stratos and Vizada who then resell it to service providers like KVH, the SatPhoneStore, and many others who finally package it up in innumerable ways for the masses. It’s hard to figure out what’s going on, let alone who’s responsible…

I briefly tested the IsatPhone Pro last summer, later we enjoyed the “independent study” war, and recently Inmarsat announced that the phone can now be used as a narrow bandwidth modem when attached via USB...

For those of us who need to be reminded that touch screen isn’t everything, don’t those big dedicated knobs and backlit buttons do the job?  It’s Furuno’s recently introduced FM4000 VHF, which benefits from a good video guide here.   I quip about “somewhat new” in the headline because there are numerous clues — like optional RAM+ mics and Bluetooth headset capabilities — which suggest that the FM4000 is a kissing cousin of Standard Horizon’s GX5500.  There’s nothing wrong with shared expertise, in my view, and knowing it gives a consumer a better idea of what they’re getting into.  Which is a seriously good and easy-to-use radio, I’m pretty sure.

That diabolical test machine is forcing a measured, if destructive, twist into an Iridium 9555 sat phone, which may be a good metaphor for what Inmarsat had in mind when it commissioned an independent study comparing its Isatphone Pro to the 9555 as well as the Thuraya XT (which doesn’t cover the Americas).  After all, there had already been crowing about another “independent study” that turned out to be commissioned by Iridium (downloadable here).  Now it’s very easy to be cynical about studies that each find the hardware and service offered by the company that paid to be superior, but actually I found both reports to be largely credible and quite useful…