Singapore 27 Oct 2010 - Singapore Telecommunications Limited (Singtel) today announced several new satellite services, reinforcing its position as a multi-service platform provider that offers a rich suite of applications for the maritime community.
@Singtel v2.0 is a unified communications platform that helps crew to stay in touch with family and friends during the long months at sea, while Remote Diagnostics makes downtime at sea a thing of the past for Singtel Satellite Maritime Very Small Aperture Terminal (MVSAT) customers. The addition of low cost Global Ku-band Maritime broadband coupled with these value-added services allows Singtel to offer satellite customers a fully integrated and holistic ICT offering.
Making communications at sea a breeze
Mr Titus Yong, Vice President, Singtel Satellite said the new services are designed from the ground up after listening to customer feedback.
“The @Singtel v2.0 Unified Communications platform is an all-in-one business and crew welfare solution that unifies data, email and web surfing on a single platform. Connecting people, teams and information, it is feature-packed to deliver the reliability, scalability, security and flexibility customers have come to expect from Singtel.
“This solution enables crew to read news and access the Internet while staying in touch with family and friends during the long months at sea via secure and cost-effective emails and SMS,” he said.
Backed by Singtel’s “always-on” broadband connection, life at sea will be much more tolerable with Singtel’s worldwide voice over IP services via SIP phones. The solution’s prepaid messaging card also deducts tokens while the crew sends SMS, mail and in the future, voice traffic. In addition, crew can easily stay in touch with people at home because of a new user-friendly portal which enables easy family/friend response to email or SMS messages. Using just one integrated email account, crew mobility is enhanced as they continue to login to the same email account even when moving from one vessel to another.
As an open, Unified Communications platform, @Singtel v2.0 also delivers operational efficiencies, easy manageability, industry-leading security and seamless interoperability. Integrated with a complimentary Management Utility, maritime companies can now view their email transaction online, do archive retrieval, download call data records and conduct email management such as setting mailbox size limits.
Remote Diagnostics – Making downtime a thing of the past
Mr Yong said: “At Singtel, we are committed to helping maritime customers improve their bottom line and their efficiency – without trade offs in employee welfare.
“Downtime at sea can mean hundreds of thousands incurred in docking fees and compensation. Singtel’s in-depth experience with maritime communications has equipped us with expert insight into the common problems faced by vessels at sea with the deployment of maritime broadband, enabling us to develop the Singtel Remote Diagnostics Solution - proven to cut problem determination time from one week to one hour. And in most cases not involving parts replacement, the system can be remotely restored to health through system and network management tools.”
The flexible solution is integrated as part of the shipboard console. It enables the convenient pre-programming of parameters specific to each customer or vessel including line of sight, footprint, communications components, physical components, LAN networks and SIP phones. For example, a known physical infrastructure such as a crane onboard a vessel blocking line of sight can be pre-programmed into the system, thus preventing the existing blockage from being recognised as a fault.
In addition to these services, the introduction of Global Ku-band maritime broadband completes Singtel’s band-agnostic satellite service offering.
About Singtel
Singtel is Asia's leading communications group with operations and investments around the world. Serving both the corporate and consumer markets, it is committed to bringing the best global communications solutions to customers in the Asia Pacific and beyond.
With significant operations in Singapore and Australia (through wholly-owned subsidiary Singtel Optus), the Group provides a comprehensive portfolio of services that includes voice and data solutions over fixed, wireless and Internet platforms, as well as infocomm technology and pay TV.
The Group has presence in Asia and Africa reaching more than 351 million mobile customers in 25 countries, including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand.
To serve the needs of multi-national corporations, Singtel also has a network of 36 offices in 19 countries and territories throughout Asia Pacific, Europe and the United States. These offices enable Singtel to deliver reliable and quality network solutions to its customers, either on its own or jointly with local partners.
Singtel employs more than 23,000 people worldwide and had a turnover of S$16.87 billion (US$11.82 billion) and net profit after tax of S$3.91 billion (US$2.74 billion) for the year ended 31 March 2010. More information can be found @ www.singtel.com and www.optus.com.au.
