The luxury cruise line Silversea has announced the fleet-wide deployment of superfast satellite broadband, enabling passengers to stay connected while at sea. The move comes ahead of Silver Spirit’s Dubai and South Africa cruises in 2018.
The cruise line has partnered with Telenor Maritime, the global maritime mobile operator, and SES, the communications satellite owner, to make this possible. Telenor has installed Global VSAT services and mobile broadband backhaul, 3G, Wi-Fi and digital services across the fleet, with speeds up to 150Mb/s.
“Silversea Cruises is recognised as the gold standard in luxury cruising with a passion for cruise excellence and providing first class guest experience to their demanding cruise guests. They are planning today to meet the demands of tomorrow,” said Frode Støldal, CEO of Telenor Maritime.
“We met their requirements through innovation in technology and way of working. SES with their global concept as sole airtime provider across the globe, combined with our mobile background and ability to optimising services end to end over satellite links proved immensely successful,” he added.
Now all guests on-board a Silversea cruise ship will be able to use their mobile, tablet and laptop devices as though they were at home, with no constraints on Apps such as Facebook, YouTube or even Netflix.
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The provision of broadband streaming at sea is a “real game changer” Støldal added.
“We were surprised by the ability of our partners to deploy a fully functional solution in just one month, at the end of the year, across a fleet of 8 vessels spread all over the world, some of them at very remote destinations,” says Fabio Agostini, CIO of Silversea Cruises.
“The internet on board is amazingly fast and consistent throughout the fleet. We are replacing all antennas with brand new ones, entirely redundant, and this is just the beginning of a new generation of services that we will implement in the short to medium term,” he added.
Silversea Cruises’ ship Silver Spirit will be cruising from Dubai this year and in 2018. Her 2017 Dubai cruise is a 15-night cruise from Dubai down the West Indian coast and across the Indian Ocean to the Maldives. The cruise departs December 3rd, 2017.
In 2018 she’ll return to Dubai with an 18-night cruise to Rome, departing Dubai on February 22nd, 2018.
The same cruise ship, Silver Spirit, will also be cruising from South Africa’s port of Cape Town next year, offering a 10-night roundtrip Cape Town cruise to all South Africa’s major ports on January 5th, 2018, and an 18-night cruise to the Maldives from Cape Town on January 15th.
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