An ORCHESTRA worthy of tomorrow

There is a Zen saying, “When walking, walk, when eating, eat”. What Inmarsat has done by announcing ORCHESTRA is to do just that. We are focusing on our customer, the global mobility customer.

Our customers are looking for a solution that will help them optimise their use of a new generation of connected technologies that are reshaping their world. In maritime, we see the rise of digital technologies and automation, even the dawn of unmanned vessels, meaning that one of the world’s oldest industries is set to change more in the next 30 years than it has in the last 300.

And in this context, our job is to ensure our customers are fully prepared for this new wave of change. We are focused on bringing together the best elements from relevant technologies and arranging them together for our customers into a harmonious orchestra. ORCHESTRA is a hybrid network platform offering global coverage, ultra-high capacity and resilience, and it will provide customers with a low-risk transition to next generation service capabilities.

Well, how did we come up with this concept and why does it make sense?

Thanks to the somewhat movie star like status that the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have, the LEO satellite operators have been making a lot of noise, a cacophony of noise at times! These new constellations promise low latency and high bandwidths to remote areas of the world. On the surface, this sounds perfect for maritime users, after all you don’t get much more remote than the vast blue oceans of the world.

However, these LEO constellations are being built, first and foremost, to serve consumer markets rather than enterprise grade customers. What’s the difference you may ask? Well, in the consumer market, the user terminal talks to the satellite and then directly to a gateway connected to the internet.

For global maritime customers, you need to have hundreds of ground stations and ensure that you have enterprise-level reliability and security in that network infrastructure - a hairy target indeed for unproven and undeployed wideband inter-satellite switching. This makes them a risky choice for our global mobility customers looking for long term investments.

But LEO satellites could make sense if they were deployed in the right way for the maritime market; not as standalone mega-constellations but as part of a broader solution deploying multiple layers, including GEO and terrestrial 5G. Certainly, in extended hot spots, such as congested shipping channels, their longer range and low latency would make a valuable contribution to a vessel's overall connectivity solution. For the new and emerging world of unmanned surface vessels where latency is critical, having a LEO to supplement your service could prove very powerful.

The same can be said about terrestrial coverage. They don’t have the type of range that is needed for the maritime customer, but they do have lower latency and much higher bandwidths which can really help with remote visualisation in congested and potentially dangerous port traffic.

By focusing on the global mobility customer, we have decided to take our highly resilient, global GEO infrastructure, which we already have a proven record in, then add HEO, LEO and terrestrial, and combine this all with 5G dynamic mesh technologies. With ORCHESTRA, Inmarsat may have just created a harmonious solution that is worthy for the maritime world of tomorrow.