Vizada has now launched Inmarsat FleetBroadband 150, a new service for the maritime community delivering voice, IP data, and SMS, at speeds of up to 150 kbps.
Additionally, Addvalue Technologies Ltd. has appointed Vizada as its first Tier 1 distributor partner for Addvalue’s Skipper 150 FleetBroadband terminal. With a mobile satellite terminal measuring 29 cm, the Inmarsat FleetBroadband 150 (FB150) service is designed for smaller vessels with relatively low data requirements including fishing vessels, leisure boats and smaller merchant vessels such as tug boats. Vizada Solutions is fully compatible with Inmarsat FB150 and enables customers to use prepaid calling cards with the terminal, to keep up to date with weather reports, use the Internet, and send low-cost, compressed emails. Vizada’s Universal Card provides crew a fixed amount of credit for private voice calls, email and internet browsing and SkyFile Weather software package enables users to receive accurate and personalized weather forecasts including high-resolution satellite images. Vizada’s SkyFile Mail reduces the costs of emails, SMS, and fax by compressing data sent over the FB150 terminal by up to 90 percent.
Vizada supplies these customers with the Inmarsat FB150 service through a network of service provider partners located worldwide. One partner, Jason Electronics Pte Ltd., a Vizada Service Provider based in Singapore, said this about the new service: “We have already proposed the Inmarsat FB150 service to our shipping customers, notably for smaller vessels such as tug boats, as well as fishing and leisure customers,” said Ristina Seah, Marketing Executive for Airtime at Jason Electronics. “We are targeting customers who intend to upgrade from Inmarsat Mini-M and who need to send a lot of data with global coverage. There is a great deal of demand in the maritime market for this kind of service.” To enable these service providers to track and manage Inmarsat FB150 end-user accounts and traffic consumption, Vizada has developed a free web-based management system – The Source®. Customers can also set limits and alerts in The Source to ensure that broadband communications costs are tightly controlled.